LIBRARY OF CONGRES 

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6* 



"These Little Ones." 



WHAT GOD HAS COMMANDED TOUCHING THEIR 
CHURCH MEMBERSHIP, AND WHAT HE HAS 
GRACIOUSLY PROMISED CONCERN- 
ING THEIR SALVATION. 



BY THE / 

Rev. WILLIAM SCRIBNE: 



Author of 
"PEAT FOB TOUE CHILDEEN," " PEAY FOE THE HOLY SPIEIT." 



m^^S 




PHILADELPHIA ; 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 

1334 CHESTNUT STREET. 



.o*> 3 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by 

THE TRUSTEES OF THE 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 
In the OfficWf the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



The Library 
ot Confess 



WASHINGTON 



Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereotypers and Electrotypers, Philada, 



Beiricattott* 



TO 
THE MEMORY 

OF 

MY SAINTED BKOTHEE, 

CHARLES SCRIBNER, 

NO LESS TENDERLY BELOVED NOW 

THAN WHEN 

HE WAS PEESENT WITH US. 



PREFACE. 



Within the last twenty years the mind of 
our ministers and people has been much exer- 
cised on the subject of the church relations of 
the children of the covenant, and it has re- 
ceived no little attention. That the general 
and growing attention given to the subject 
has resulted in great good no one can ques- 
tion. 

It will doubtless, however, be freely ad- 
mitted that we still see evidences and signs 
of the forgetfulness, the ignoring or the dis- 
owning of infant church membership and of 
God's precious covenant-promise to parents in 
relation to their children. Multitudes who 
would by no means surrender infant baptism 
are unable to say exactly why the infants of 
church members are baptized. Sabbath-school 
children whose parents are professors of re- 
ligion hear never a word from their superin- 

5 



6 PREFACE. 

tendents and teachers by way of instructing 
them concerning their covenant relations and 
covenant duties. Thousands of professors, 
and we know not how many pastors, are too 
well satisfied to have Sabbath-school teachers 
do the whole work of religiously instructing 
the children of the Church. Books are writ- 
ten on the conversion of children in which the 
subject does not have even the slightest men- 
tion. Committees consisting of ministers are 
often appointed by presbyteries to visit the 
churches within their bounds in order to warm 
up these cold churches, without receiving from 
the presbyteries any instruction to present the 
subject of the relation of the baptized chil- 
dren to the church, and to warn parents not 
to neglect covenant promises and covenant 
training and education. Conventions of 
elders and other convocations are held to 
consider how revivals may be brought on, in 
which not a word is breathed as to the need 
or the methods of arousing churches and 
Christians on this subject. And when the 
children of professors become communicants, 
it is frequently the case that the people have 



PREFACE. 7 

no other idea than that these children "join 
the church" just as adults join it when they 
are baptized. It is believed, therefore, that 
the necessity for the continued discussion of 
this subject is not yet superseded. 

The subject handled in the first chapter 
is the eternal covenant between the Father 
and the Son in reference to the salvation of 
Christ's people, since it is this which lays the 
foundation of the covenant of grace, of which 
God and his people are the parties, and which 
covenant, when it is externally and visibly 
enacted, includes their children. 

Our sole argument for the church member- 
ship of the children of professing Christians 
is the one derived from the fact that the chil- 
dren of God's people were by divine com- 
mand included in the Church under the old 
dispensation. All the Jews of the old dis- 
pensation were professors of the true religion 
and constituted the visible Church, considered 
as a spiritual society, and yet their children 
were included in it by God's command. This 
is the broad and enduring basis of infant 
church membership. 



8 PREFACE. 

The last chapter of the book discusses 
the promise which God makes to faithful 
parents that their children shall be saved. 
We would especially call attention to this 
chapter. 

It is deeply to be regretted that many 
Christians think and speak of God's plan of 
redemption, of their own salvation, and of 
the salvation of their children, without hav- 
ing present to their minds the ideas expressed 
by the word " covenant." The reason is that 
the word itself has been so much laid aside. 
The Scriptures represent the plan of salvation 
under the form of a covenant. They con- 
stantly use that word with reference to it. 
They also teach that every soul that is saved 
at all is saved by covenant, and that our chil- 
dren are saved by covenant. Christians should 
be just as familiar with the word " cove- 
nant" as they are with the words " grace," 
"throne of grace," "heirs of the promise," 
"kingdom of God," "redemption," "precious 
faith," etc. It would seem as if the word were 
very dear to the Holy Spirit, so frequently 
does he use it in the Bible. What is the 



PREFACE. 9 

basis of church membership but the covenant 
of grace which Christ condescends to make 
with his people ? To be regarded as within 
the covenant and to be recognized as a mem- 
ber of the Church are the same thing. Let 
us, then, hold on to the word if we would not 
lose sight of the truths expressed by it. 

One word more. In regard to the subject 
of the church membership of the infants of 
believers, the question is not whether the 
recognition and treatment of them as mem- 
bers would be attended with evils or not, but 
the question is, What has God commanded ? 
Let us search the Scriptures to ascertain what 
God requires of us; then let us obey him, 
whatever may be our fears as to the evil 
consequences which may flow from our 
obedience. 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER I. page 
The Eternal Covenant between the Fa- 
ther and the Son 13 

CHAPTER II. 
The Believer's Covenant with Christ when 
he First Exercises a Living Faith. — The 
Covenant which is Externally Enacted 
by all who Profess the Christian Re- 
ligion 36 

CHAPTER III. 
First Step in the Argument for the Church 
Membership of Infants 57 

CHAPTER IV. 

Second Step of the Argument. — The An- 
swers to this Argument which have been 
Attempted shown to be Inconclusive. — 

The Conclusion Reached 88 

11 



12 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. page 
Objections Considered. — Partial Restate- 
ment of the Doctrine 110 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Promise of our Covenant-Keeping God 
to Bless and Save the Children of his 
People 133 



These Little Ones. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ETERNAL COVENANT BETWEEN THE 
FATHER AND THE SON. 

We assume that it is the belief of our 
readers that the death of the infinitely holy 
and innocent Redeemer was a real endurance 
of the penalty of the law ; in other words, 
that the Son of God was substituted in our 
place, that our sins were charged to his ac- 
count, and that he was punished in our room 
and stead. Now, there could be no such 
thing as his being substituted in the place of 
all his people without his being substituted 
in the place of each of them. Each believer 
may feel that the blessed Saviour took his 
place as truly as if he were the only one in 
the universe to be redeemed. 

The language of the Bible is, " Christ hath 
redeemed us from the curse of the law, being 

13 



14 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

made a curse for us;" "Who his own self 
bare our sins in his own body on the tree." 
These assurances do not mean that Christ 
obeyed and suffered for the company of his 
people in general only, and not for each of 
them in particular. They speak to each one 
as an individual who has faith, and say to 
him, "Christ was made a curse for thee, took 
thy place and was punished for thee; his own 
self bare thy sins, suffered the penalty which 
thou deservedst to suffer." It is thus we are 
to understand the two passages quoted above, 
and also a multitude of similar ones; as, "He 
was wounded for our trangressions, he was 
bruised for our iniquities ;" " Christ died 
for us ;" " Christ died for our sins ;" " The 
good Shepherd giveth his life for the 
sheep ;" " He is the propitiation for our 
sins," etc. 

The blessed Redeemer, then, in obeying 
and suffering represented us, acted as our sub- 
stitute — that is, as the substitute of each of 
his people. But his substitution in our place 
in order that he might himself render a satis- 
faction to the law would not have availed 
unless the Father, the supreme authority, 
had consented to the adoption of the plan. 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 15 

Without the approbation and sanction of the 
infinite Judge such a procedure as that of the 
substitution of an innocent victim in the place 
of the guilty criminal would clearly have 
had no validity. 

Equally true is it that such a procedure 
would have been an act of the highest injus- 
tice without the free consent of the one whom 
it was proposed to substitute in the sinner's 
place. 

What are we to infer, then, when we learn 
that the substitution was a thing of actual 
occurrence — that Christ, the holy One, act- 
ually died as our substitute? Are w T e not to 
infer that both the Father and the Son did in 
truth consent to the arrangement — that the 
sanction of the supreme Judge was really 
given, and also that the Son himself freely 
consented to being made our substitute? In 
short, are we not to infer that in the counsels 
of eternity there was intercommunion between 
the Persons of the Godhead, in which each 
signified his concurrence and agreement to the 
arrangement? Evidently we are shut up to 
this inference, and we readily see that in such 
an agreement the parties go far toward con- 
tracting a covenant. Only one thing more 



16 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

is needed to make the agreement a complete 
covenant. 

That one thing is that the Father should 
stipulate to reward his Son on condition of 
his dying as our representative and substi- 
tute. If the Father freely delivered up his 
only-begotten Son to die in our place, and if 
the Son freely consented to be delivered up to 
die in our room and stead, and if, in addition 
to this, the Father promised to reward his Son 
for enduring the penalty of the law that we 
might escape, — then here we have all the 
characteristics of a covenant. 

Now, the Scriptures not only declare that 
God did sincerely consent to his Son dying 
(himself, indeed, laying on his Son our in- 
iquities), and that the Son came with delight 
to do his Father's will in the matter, but 
they declare that the Father stipulated to 
recompense, and that he has already begun to 
recompense, his Son for dying. They teach, 
moreover, what that recompense or reward 
was to be. The Redeemer was to be reward- 
ed (the Scriptures teach) by seeing the eternal 
happiness, blessedness and glory of those in 
w r hose place he should die and for whom he 
should work out a righteousness. The heart 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 17 

of the blessed Son of God was set on seeing 
the salvation of his people, loved by him 
from eternity ; and it is as if the Father said 
to him, " Their salvation you shall see, pro- 
vided you be actually substituted in their 
place and obey and suffer in their room and 
stead — that is, provided you perform the con- 
dition of the same covenant of works which 
Adam was under, now enlarged by Adam's 
disobedience." Thus it was that the two 
Persons of the adorable Trinity entered into 
a covenant. 

Some of the passages which teach that the 
Father gave this work to his Son to perform 
(the work of bringing in an everlasting right- 
eousness by his obedience and suffering), that 
the Son freely undertook the work assigned 
him, and that the Father stipulated to reward 
him by "giving" him all those in whose 
place he should die, are the following. 

To quote a passage first from an Old Testa- 
ment writer, in the memorable closing verses 
of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah we read as 
follows : " When thou shalt make his soul an 
offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall 
prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord 
shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the 
2 



18 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by 
his knowledge shall my righteous servant jus- 
tify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. 
Therefore will I divide him a portion with the 
great , and he shall divide the spoil with the 
strong ; because he hath poured out his soul 
unto death: and he was numbered with the 
transgressors ; and he bare the sin of many, 
and made intercession for the transgressors" 

Here it is declared that the blessed Mes- 
siah is to be the possessor of a rich reward 
promised him. He is to behold his seed, his 
saved ones, he is to see the glorious result of 
the travail of his soul and be satisfied, and 
all because by his own agreement the Father 
was to deliver him up and make his soul an 
offering for sin, and cause him to bear his 
people's iniquities. It is not possible to read 
these words of the sacred writer without see- 
ing that what Christ suffered he had been 
designated to suffer, and that by covenant. 

Among the many declarations of the New 
Testament writers on this subject, none, per- 
haps, is more striking than that familiar one 
contained in the second chapter of the Epis- 
tle to the Philippians, where we are told that 
the eternal Son of God made himself of no 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 19 

reputation and took upon him the form of a 
servant, and urns made in the likeness of men, 
and being found in fashion as a man he hum- 
bled himself and became obedient unto death, 
even the death of the cross. And on this 
account, the inspired apostle goes on to say, 
God hath highly exalted him. 

With the declarations of our Lord himself 
bearing on this subject all readers of the 
New Testament are familiar. Some of these 
declarations are found in John iv. 34; vi. 
38-40; x. 27-29; xvii. 4, 9, 24. They 
should be taken together; and when thus 
read, they teach that the Father gave the 
Son a work to perform, a prominent part 
of which consisted in his devoting himself 
to death for his sheep; that he sent him 
into the world to accomplish that work, and 
that he promised to reward him upon its ac- 
complishment by causing those given him to 
come to him, to be partakers of his redemp- 
tion. Christ represents his coming, his hu- 
miliation, his dying, as what his Father's 
commandment had enjoined upon him and 
as what his Father loved him for: Therefore 
doth my Father love me because I lay down 
my life. . . . This commandment [i. e., to lay 



20 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

down his life] have I received of my Father. 
And he represents the eternal life of his 
people as the recompense set before him for 
coming into the world and dying. He was 
not to lose a single one : And this is the 
Father's will that sent me, that of all which he 
hath given me I should lose nothing, but should 
raise it up again at the last day. And this is 
the will of Him that sent me, that every one 
which seeth the Son and believeih on him may 
have everlasting life. 

Thus it is evident that the work of Christ 
has immediate respect to a covenant. "The 
authority of the Father appoints certain 
duties to the Son ; the Father's love and 
faithfulness guarantee to the Son certain 
promises of support, countenance, comfort, 
victory. The Son undertakes the duties as- 
signed, and appeals to the promises relating 
to them." It has been truly said that this 
wonderful covenant or compact between the 
Father and the Son, kept before the mind 
and not lost sight of, gives doctrinal signif- 
icance to what were otherwise mere exter- 
nal history, for it places the outward move- 
ments of Christ's career on earth in their 
true relations with the eternal purpose of 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 21 

the Godhead and the eternal destinies of 
men. 

The consent on the part of the eternal Son 
to subject himself to the law to which we 
were bound involved an agreement to be- 
come incarnate. This was a necessary pre- 
liminary step, and this, therefore, was a part 
of the work assigned him by the Father. 
He was to be born of a woman — born as we 
are born — taking to himself a true body and 
a reasonable soul. Thus, though he was to 
remain the same divine Person he had ever 
been, he was to take our nature into personal 
union with himself. Taking part of flesh 
and body, becoming bone of our bone and 
flesh of our flesh, becoming in all things 
like unto his brethren, yet without sin, he 
would not only be constituted a person sus- 
ceptible of suffering and death, but he would 
be made capable of sympathizing with his 
people, of being touched with the feeling of 
their infirmities. As his becoming incarnate 
was a necessary preliminary step, he cove- 
nanted thus to assume our nature no less 
than to die. 

The subject of the covenant between the 
Father and the Son in reference to the salva- 



22 THESE LITTLE OXES. 

tion of man is full of mystery. It is, how- 
ever, clearly revealed in the Scriptures, and 
what the Scriptures teach in relation to it we 
must reverently consider. There is, indeed, 
one only living and true God, yet in the 
Godhead there are three Persons. This ad- 
mits of one being the object of the acts of 
the other, and of one loving and addressing 
the other. It admits of two of the divine 
Persons entering into a covenant with each 
other. " The infinitude of God does not 
render such a transaction impossible." 

Although there is nothing in the nature 
of a covenant between two parties which 
requires that they should be on an equality, 
yet the two parties to the eternal covenant 
of grace are equal : they are equal in honor, 
power and glory. ]S"or are the Scriptures, 
when they affirm this equality, inconsistent 
with themselves in teaching that the Father 
sends the Son into the world, gives him 
a work to do and promises to reward him 
for performing the work assigned him. If 
this implies some kind of subordination of 
the Son to the Father, it is a subordination 
without inferiority. It is a subordination 
which is consistent with the Son's possessing 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 23 

the same infinite perfections that belong to 
the Father. 

What makes it so important that the cove- 
nant of grace should fill a large space in our 
thoughts is, that it constitutes a union be- 
tween Christ and his people prior to all the 
other unions which exist between them. It 
is the foundation of the representative union. 
When the blessed Redeemer covenanted with 
the Father to undertake the work of pur- 
chasing our redemption, he became, even in 
the counsels of eternity, one with us. Thus 
it became fit that he should become our 
representative, our substitute, and die for 
us. He could not be accepted as standing 
in the relation of the substitute and surety 
of his people without this previous covenant 
oneness. What comfort, then, should it give 
us to know that before the foundation of 
the world this union was really established ! 
Being identified with the people given unto 
him by the covenant which took place be- 
tween himself and the Father, he becomes 
their competent and acceptable substitute 
and surety. 

Another reason why it is important that 
the covenant of grace should be fully recog- 



24 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

nized and frequently held up before our 
minds, is that where Christ, the last Adam, 
is little recognized as a covenant head there 
can be little reason or inducement to recog- 
nize the first in that light either. "It will 
uniformly be found that the theology which 
is meagre in reference to the covenant of 
grace is still more so as to the covenant of 
works. In fact, it is more from what is 
partly the analogy and partly the antithesis 
of the two covenants, when set forth in the 
mutual light which they reflect on each other, 
that the covenant of works becomes manifest 
than in any very express or abundant evi- 
dence of its own alone."* 

When the blessed Son of God, by the 
terms of the covenant of grace, became our 
substitute, it was with the view, as already 
stated, of performing the same condition the 
fulfillment of which was originally demand- 
ed of Adam in order to his obtaining eternal 
life — with this difference, that in consequence 
of Adam's transgression the condition com- 
prehended more in its requirements than it 

* The Atonement in its Relations to the Covenant, the 
Priesthood, the Intercession of our Lord, by Rev. Hugh 
Martin. 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 25 

originally did. The eternal covenant be- 
tween the Father and the Son was indeed a 
separate covenant from that made with Adam 
in Eden, yet the fulfillment of the terms of 
the one covenant was the express condition 
of the other covenant, except that in the case 
of man in a state of innocence the condition 
was only obedience to its precepts, whereas 
in the case of guilty man and that of Christ, 
his representative, it was not only obedience, 
but suffering. 

As the covenant of grace was formed with 
Christ as the head and representative of his 
people, it was formed in him with all those 
given to him by the Father* Thus we see 

* There is no doctrinal difference between those who 
hold, as we do, that the only real covenant connected 
with the salvation of man is the eternal covenant of 
grace between the Father and the Son, and those who 
hold that besides this eternal covenant (which they call 
the covenant of redemption) there is a covenant between 
God and believers, this last being styled by them the 
covenant of grace. It must be remembered that even 
the former class, who include all the facts of Scripture 
relating to the subject under one covenant, admit that 
the transaction with believers in reference to their sal- 
vation may be called a covenant, only they maintain 
that it is but the administration by the Mediator of the 
eternal covenant for the purpose of communicating its 



26 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

why the apostle draws a parallel between 
Adam and Christ. Adam and Christ are 
the respective federal heads or representatives 
of those whom the one by his disobedience 
involved in condemnation, and for whom the 
other has by his obedience obtained eternal 
life. 

We have considered a few of the passages 
of Scripture which teach that the Son is 
recompensed for bringing in an everlasting 
righteousness through his obedience and suf- 
fering by seeing the eternal happiness and 
blessedness of those for whom he died; in 
other words, by witnessing the salvation of 
his Church. This was the joy which was set 
before him. This was his crowning reward, 
the I'ecompense which he most coveted. But 
in addition to this promise, which had respect 
to his beloved people, there was a promise or 

blessings to those for whom they are intended. Tims 
they hold that this covenant with believers (which they 
contend should be looked at in the light of an adminis- 
trative provision, since Christ gives them the faith he 
demands of them), promising them salvation on con- 
dition of faith, is not an entirely separate one from the 
covenant of which God and his Son are the parties. 
And the covenant between Christ and his people may 
with propriety also be called, as the other is, the cove- 
nant of grace. 



THESE LITTLE OXES, 27 

stipulation which had respect to his own 
Person. 

1. It was provided that he should be ex- 
alted to the throne of universal dominion. 

Our Lord had reference to this promise of 
the eternal covenant when, just as he was about 
to ascend, he said to his disciples, All power is 
given to me in heaven and in earth. Heaven 
and earth are in scriptural language the 
whole universe. To this promise made to 
the Son the apostle also had reference when, 
writing to the Philippians, he says : Where- 
fore God also hath highly exalted him and 
given him a name yjhich is above every name: 
that at the name of Jesus every knee should 
bow, of things in heaven and things in earth 
and things under the earth; and that every 
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is I^ord, 
to the glory of God the Father; and to the 
Ephesians Goel raised Christ from the dead 
and set him at his oivn right hand in the hea- 
venly places, far above all principedity and 
power and might and dominion, and every 
name that is named, not only in this world, but 
also in that which is to come, and hath put cdl 
things under his feet. 

The absolutely universal dominion of the 



28 THESE LITTLE OXES. 

God-man Mediator is also asserted in He- 
brews when it is said, Thou hast put all things 
in subjection under his feet; for in that he put 
all in subjection under him, lie left nothing that 
is not put under him. 

Oar blessed Jesus has ascended up on 
high. He is recompensed for all his suffer- 
ings. He is gone into heaven, and is on the 
right hand of God, angels and authorities and 
powers being made subject unto him* The 
Father loveth the Son ; and in accordance 
with the arrangements of the counsels of 
eternity, he hath committed all things into 
his hands. Having been thus exalted to a 
position of unlimited dominion, he has re- 
ceived such names and titles as King of 
kings, Lord of all, and Prince of peace. As 
mediatorial King, our Saviour has the vo- 
litions and actions of all moral agents in the 
entire universe under his complete control. 
"All discordant passions and interests, all the 
activities of superior intelligences, as well the 
enmity of fiends as the ministry of angels," 
and even all irrational and inanimate things, 
are made subservient to his designs. 

The dominion of which we speak must not 
be confounded with that providential gov- 



THESE LITTLE OXES. 29 

eminent which necessarily belongs to Christ 
as a divine Person, and of which he can 
never divest himself. We are speaking of 
that sovereignty which attaches to that won- 
derful and glorious Person, the God-man, 
occupying the office of mediator, and which 
has been given him in fulfillment of the 
promise of the covenant made with him by 
the Father. Our Mediator is not the Logos, 
but that man in whom dwells all the fullness 
of the Godhead, the Son of God, with our 
nature in such intimate union with his divine 
Person that it is as truly his own as his 
divine nature is. " That a person in whom 
dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, 
and w T ho is filled with all the love, tender- 
ness, compassion, meekness and forbearance 
which Christ manifested while here on earth, 
has all power in heaven and earth committed 
to his hands, and is not far from any one 
of us, is an unspeakable delight to all his 
people." 

It is in order that he may carry on his 
mediatorial work that he is thus exalted. 
But such exaltation would not have been 
possible unless he had already been in pos- 
session of divine perfections, for the nature 



30 THESE LITTLE ONES, 

of this dominion, and its extent, demand such 
perfections. God has not said, "Sit on my 
right hand," to any creature but to Him who 
was already the brightness of his glory and 
the express image of his Person. For only 
one possessed of omnipotence, omniscience 
and omnipresence could exercise a dominion 
embracing all creatures and all orders of 
beings^ and reaching even to the reason and 
conscience. Inasmuch as this kingdom, ex- 
tending over the universe, has been given to 
Christ in order that he may have power to 
consummate the work of redemption, when 
this purpose is accomplished he will deliver 
it up and no longer as Mediator reign over 
the universe. But he will still remain the 
Head and Sovereign of the redeemed in hea- 
ven, and that for ever. 

2. But the exaltation promised the Re- 
deemer in the eternal compact consists not 
only in his being appointed to have domin- 
ion over the universe. It consists also in 
his being appointed to administer the affairs 
of his own people — his Church as distinct 
from the universe. 

This Church is a kingdom of vast extent. 
In one aspect it embraces the body of Christ's 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 31 

professing people — that is, the visible organ- 
ized church ; in another aspect his kingdom 
relates only to those who have the Holy 
Spirit and are truly members of his body. 

First. We will first say a few words about 
his kingly office, as it relates only to these 
latter — viz., to those who have the Holy 
Spirit and are his own true people. 

In executing his kingly office as it relates 
to his own true people — his own redeemed 
ones — he performs acts which terminate di- 
rectly on their souls; for, seated on his 
throne, he " as Mediator effectually applies to 
his people through his Spirit that salvation 
which he had previously achieved for them 
in his estate of humiliation." As the God- 
man and Head of the Church, the Mediator 
has received the Holy Spirit to send to his 
chosen people to renew their hearts, to sanc- 
tify, establish and comfort them, and to en- 
rich them with heavenly gifts. 

The apostle speaks of this in his Epistle 
to the Ephesians where he says, To every one 
of us is given grace, according to the measure 
of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, when 
he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, 
and gave gifts unto men. And Peter teaches 



32 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

the same truth when he says to the Jewish 
rulers, Him hath God exalted with his right 
hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give 
repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sin. 

Christ is the source of the inward life of his 
people — the Church for which he died — and 
also of its power. This would not be possi- 
ble if he were only human, but he is more 
than human. His Person is divine; he is 
the God-man ; and it is as such that in 
ascending up on high he led captivity cap- 
tive and gave gifts unto men. The gifts be- 
stowed upon his people are those which he 
secured for them by fulfilling by his obe- 
dience and death the conditions of the cove- 
nant of grace. And it is by bestowing upon 
them these inward gifts that he applies his 
purchased redemption to them. 

Had our first federal head, Adam, fulfilled 
in Paradise the condition of the covenant of 
works, had he when on probation strictly ad- 
hered to the law's demands, he would have 
received at the close of his probation the 
reward promised him, and the blessing 
would also have come upon his posterity. We 
should have been made partakers of it. We 
should have partaken of it immediately upon 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 33 

our coming into existence, for we should have 
had no depravity to be first removed in order 
to render us capable of fully entering upon 
our reward, and no act of our souls would 
have been necessary to make Adam's obedience 
our obedience. And as no act of ours would 
have been necessary, as no co-operation on our 
part would have been required, to place us in 
the position to be benefited by Adam's obedi- 
ence, so no one holding an office analogous to 
Christ's kingly office would have been need- 
ed to administer to us the spiritual and eter- 
nal good secured for us by Adam's perfect 
conformity to the divine law during the 
limited period of his probation. The good 
merited for us by Adam's righteousness we 
would at once have enjoyed. 

But Adam broke the covenant — he failed 
to render obedience — and merited no reward 
either for himself or for us whom he repre- 
sented. And now, our souls cannot come into 
possession of the benefits of redemption which 
the second Adam has merited for us, unless 
they are by Christ himself administered to 
us. How he administers them to us has 
already been seen. He bestows inward gifts 
upon us. He sends us his Holy Spirit to 



34 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

give us faith. The Spirit of Christ works 
faith in us, and gives us strength to submit 
to the righteousness of God. But faith is 
not a gift alone; it is also our duty to Christ. 
It is an exercise of our own souls — one 
which is so necessary that w r e cannot be 
saved without it — while it is to Him who is 
our Redeemer and Sovereign a duty. And 
thus it is that our blessed Mediator, in the 
very act of enriching us with the benefits of 
redemption, secures our performance of the 
duties to be performed by us as the con- 
dition of obtaining those benefits. 

Second. But w T hile in one aspect of Christ's 
kingly office that office relates only to those 
who have the Holy Spirit dwelling within 
them, and are thus the true members of his 
body, he also as King administers the affairs 
of the Church as an external and organized 
body. 

It is not our design to go into the subject 
of Christ's kingly administration of the af- 
fairs of his Church, considered as visible and 
external. Some of his kingly acts with ref- 
erence to his external Church are those of 
prescribing its form, order, and functions, and 
also its officers, who are to act as organs of 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 35 

those functions, etc. Another act which he 
performs with reference to his people, as pro- 
fessors of his religion, is that of requiring of 
them, visibly and before men, to covenant 
with him. If they obey him, they w 7 ill not 
only enter into covenant with him in an 
inward spiritual manner by embracing his 
gospel by faith, but they will visibly and 
externally covenant with him by professing 
him before men. It was one of the stipula- 
tions of the eternal covenant of grace between 
the Father and the Son, that the Son should 
administer to his people his purchased bless- 
ings by covenanting with them and requiring 
them to enter into covenant with him. And 
when they visibly, before witnesses, enter 
into covenant with their mediatorial King, 
declaring that they will be his people and 
serve him, they covenant for their children 
(as we shall endeavor to prove) as well as 
for themselves; and thus it is that the chil- 
dren of professors are members of the visible 
Church. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE BELIEVER'S COVENANT WITH CHRIST 
WHEN HE FIRST EXERCISES A LIVING 
FAITH. — THE COVENANT WHICH IS EX- 
TERNALLY ENACTED BY ALL WHO PRO- 
FESS THE TRUE RELIGION. 

I. There is an inward embracing of the 
covenant, which is the act of every soul when 
it exercises a living faith. 

There is something which we must do in 
order to be saved. We must believe. We 
must receive the Lord Jesus Christ as the 
Son of God, in whom and for whose sake 
salvation is bestowed upon us. We cannot 
partake of the blessings of the eternal cov- 
enant unless we have faith. This faith, 
this consenting of the soul to be saved on 
God's own terms, this receiving Christ, is 
not the meritorious ground of our salvation ; 
nevertheless, it ma) 7 be called the condition 
of our salvation in the sense of being a sine 
qua non to salvation. If salvation is be- 

36 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 37 

stowed upon those, and upon those only, who 
trust in Jesus, then this trust may be said 
to be the condition on which we are saved, 
simply because it is absolutely necessary that 
we should exercise trust, and not because 
there is any merit in the act. 

Faith, then, is the condition (as thus un- 
derstood) on which salvation is bestowed 
upon us. If this be so, it follows that every 
one who has found Jesus and has accepted 
of him as his only Saviour has entered into 
a covenant with him, and that because Jesus 
agrees to save such a soul on condition that 
it trusts in him, and the soul agrees to the 
condition and does cordially exercise the 
trust. Here is a covenant, and it is right 
to call the promise to save the believing soul 
a covenant promise. 

It is assumed that the benefits of redemp- 
tion have already been purchased by Christ 
for those to whom they belong, he having 
fulfilled the conditions of the eternal cove- 
nant by his obedience and sufferings. 

The Father rewards his Son for his humil- 
iation, and one part of the Son's reward con- 
sists in his having the benefits of his cove- 
nant placed in his hands to dispense to his 



38 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

own people. He dispenses them to each soul 
given to him by the Father by entering into 
a special covenant with that soul. The 
soul fulfills its part when it believes, and 
the mediatorial King fulfills his part by be- 
stowing upon it salvation. It is not meant 
that what thus takes place between the be- 
liever and his Saviour is the fulfillment or 
carrying out of exactly the same kind of 
covenant which men make with each other, 
for the very power to exercise faith is a gift 
of Christ's Spirit; nevertheless, faith is a 
duty to Christ as well as a gift from him, and 
must be an act of our own. If faith is an 
act of our own, then we co-operate with the 
Holy Spirit in exercising it. Every believer, 
without a single exception, by an act of his 
own enters into a covenant with Christ in 
the secrecy of his soul as soon as in his 
inmost soul he believes. Yes, we are saved 
by sincerely and inwardly embracing Christ's 
gracious covenant-promise. It is under this 
form — the form of a covenant — that the gos- 
pel is represented in God's word. 

When the convinced, trembling, conscience- 
stricken sinner comes to the Saviour, the Sa- 
viour says nothing to him about the number 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 39 

and enormity of his past sins. He asks no 
question as to the past; he asks no other 
question than "Have you faith in me?" If 
the sinner can reply with truth, "Lord, I 
believe/' then the Saviour will fulfill his 
promise to bless and to save according to the 
terms of the covenant of grace. And the 
life and salvation promised include every 
blessing, every gift, every mercy, which we 
receive from the time we first exercise faith 
until we die. Every good thing the believer 
receives, no matter how small, is bestowed 
upon him in fulfillment of this promise and 
in covenant love. 

A dying Christian once said, "The evil 
one has once or twice since I've been sick 
tried to tempt me to doubt my acceptance 
with God, but I dare not do it, for God has 
promised, and I dare not doubt his word. 
He has promised that he will accept all who 
put their trust in him. This I have done, 
and do still. Salvation is sincerely offered to 
those who come to Jesus, and I have come. 
I therefore will not doubt." 

Here is a recognition of the existence of a 
covenant. When this dying believer said 
that, having come to Christ, he was sure of 



40 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

salvation because salvation is promised to 
those who thus come, he said in effect that 
he was saved by embracing a covenant. If 
a Christian knows that he believes, but, not- 
withstanding that, a sense of his sinfulness 
prevents him from drawing the conclusion 
that Christ will certainly save him, then he 
doubts that Christ will be faithful to his cov- 
enant promise. AVhenever the Bible teaches 
that men are saved by faith, and in no other 
way, it teaches that they are saved simply 
by having an interest in the covenant of 
grace. 

As, therefore, every Christian knows that 
his own salvation is by faith, he knows 
that it is because he has been enabled to 
lay hold of the promise of the covenant 
that he is saved. Even believers who 
lived before the time of Abraham, as Abel, 
Enoch, Noah and others, had knowledge of 
this covenant and embraced it, for they were 
saved by faith, the promise of redemption 
having been given by Christ in the garden 
of Eden. All who have in their hearts ac- 
cepted the covenant in the way now de- 
scribed are thereby placed in communion 
with the body of God's true people — that is, 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 41 

with the invisible Church, and they thereby 
become members of that Church. 

(II.) There is an outward act, an external 
acceptance of the terms of the covenant, which 
takes place when a person receives baptism. 

We have spoken of that inward embracing 
of the covenant of grace by faith which may 
be affirmed to be the act, and which must be 
the act, of every soul that is saved. But in 
addition to this there is an outward accept- 
ance of the terms of the coyenant which the 
Church and the world witness, and which 
consists in making openly a profession of 
religion.* 

In regard to this making a public profes- 
sion, this entering into a covenant with the 
Lord before the Church and the world, we 
have several things to say, and — 

* Of course we do not hold that this external covenant- 
ing on the part of those who make an open profession 
by being baptized is an agreement to exercise a merely 
historical faith, but really to believe and obey. It is the 
believer's pledging himself visibly before men to do the 
very same thing which he has already inwardly done. If 
the person is not a true Christian, his external covenant- 
ing at the time he is baptized is his public avowal that 
he exercises the faith which the spectators mistakenly 
assume he has already exercised in the secrecy of his 
soul. 



42 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

First, as to the origin or first beginning 
of this external covenanting. It began with 
Abraham. 

Until Abraham's day the covenant had no 
seal, neither was any badge used to mark 
those as professors who professed faith in the 
coming Redeemer. But after Abraham had 
been called into the land of Canaan it pleased 
the Son of God, the Mediator, to form the 
company of believers into an external organ- 
ized Church. For this purpose he required 
Abraham to enact the covenant with Him- 
self, his Saviour and his God, in an exter- 
nal manner before men, and to receive cir- 
cumcision as a badge to mark him as one 
who thus professed faith. The transaction 
between Jehovah and Abraham, so often re- 
ferred to by the sacred writers, is not only 
called a covenant in the Old Testament, but 
whenever the writers of the Xew Testament 
speak of it they give it this name. We have 
an account of it at length in the seventeenth 
chapter of Genesis; but before quoting the 
passage in Genesis we would remark that 
although it contained disclosures which had 
never before been made, either to the patri- 
arch or to any who preceded him, yet its 



THESE LITTLE ONES, 43 

great promise, that of redemption, had been 
previously given to men, and Abraham had 
long been familiar with it. He had not only 
been familiar with it, but he had laid hold 
of it to the saving of his soul. As far as its 
main element was concerned, the covenant 
had even been both known and embraced by 
members of Adam's family, as also by many 
others who lived in the first ages of the 
world's history. We cannot believe that 
men had so long been offering their typical 
sacrifices without having any understanding 
of their true spiritual intent ; and if they 
understood the spiritual intent of sacrifices, 
they had knowledge of the precious gospel 
promise — that is, of God's, gracious covenant 
with man. But we proceed to quote the pas- 
sage which contains the words of the cove- 
nant. The first fourteen verses of the sev- 
enteenth chapter of Genesis read as follows : 
And when Ah ram was ninety years old 
and. nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and 
said unto him, I em the Almighty God ; walk 
before me, anal be thou perfect. And I will 
make my covenant between me and thee, and 
will multiply thee exceedingly. And Abram 
fell on his face: and God tallied with him, 



44 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is with 
thee, and thou shalt be a father of many 
nations. Neither shall thy name any more be 
called Abram, but thy name shall be Abra- 
ham ; for a father of many nations have 1 
made thee. And I will make thee exceeding 
fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and 
kings shall come out of thee. And I vnll 
establish my covenant between me and thee 
and thy seed after thee in their generations 
for an everlasting covenant ; to be a God unto 
thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will 
give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the 
land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land 
of Canaan, for an everlasting j)ossession ; and 
I will be their God. And God said unto 
Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant there- 
fore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their 
generations. This is my covenant, which ye 
shall keep, between me and you, and thy seed 
after thee; every man-child among you shall 
be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the 
flesh of your foreskin ; and it shall be a token 
of the covenant betwixt me and you. And he 
that is eight days old shall be circumcised 
among you, every man-child in your genera- 
tions, he that is bom in the house, or bought 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 45 

with money of any stranger, which is not of thy 
seed. He that is bom in thy house, and he that 
is bought with thy money, must needs be circum- 
cised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh 
for an everlasting covenant. And the uncir- 
cumcised man-child whose flesh of his foreskin 
is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off 
from his people; he hath broken my cove- 
nant. 

Here we have, as was said, the origin or 
first beginning of the external covenanting 
between God and believers. Although there 
is a sense in which this covenant made with 
Abraham, in as far as it promised spiritual 
blessings, included all nations, since the cov- 
enant contains the promise that its terms 
should be offered to men of all the nations 
of the earth, resulting in a blessing to mul- 
titudes, yet the real parties to it were God on 
the one hand and Abraham and his descend- 
ants on the other. The ones with whom the 
covenant was made were, we say, Abraham 
and those whom the patriarch represented ; 
and by it he learned that it was the divine 
purpose to make his seed as numerous as 
the stars of heaven, and to bestow upon 
them the land of Canaan and much tern- 



46 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

poral prosperity. He received the assurance 
that Christ should be sent into the world to 
be the Saviour of men, and that he should 
appear in the line of his descendants; and 
there was wrapped up in this announcement 
a promise to the patriarch that both he him- 
self and his descendants should be saved on 
condition of faith. The patriarch was told, 
moreover, that it was by means of a visible 
sign and seal that the covenant between God 
and himself was to be enacted, and that all 
his household would be looked upon as in- 
cluded in the covenant in such a sense as 
that they would be regarded as themselves 
embracing it, and being so regarded they 
were to be circumcised no less than himself; 
that each one of his natural descendants in all 
the generations to come would be considered as 
embracing the covenant as soon as his exist- 
ence should begin * on the ground of which 

* For a Jewish child to be regarded, as soon as born 
as one who had already embraced the covenant was the 
same as for such a child to be regarded as a visible 
church member as soon as born. It was not his receiv- 
ing the seal of circumcision on the eighth day, there- 
fore, which made him a church member; he was a 
church member in consequence of his filial relation to 
a parent who professed the true religion, and his cir- 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 47 

each one was also to receive circumcision, 

but that if at any time a parent should refuse 
to allow his child to be circumcised, the cov- 
enant would in this case be considered as 
broken: "he hath broken my covenant." 

That God, as one of the parties to this 
covenant, promised the patriarch salvation 
on condition of faith, and that Abraham, as 
the other party, promised to believe and obey 
Jehovah as the God of his redemption, we 
expect to prove hereafter. Most of the read- 
ers of this little volume are doubtless already 
convinced of it, and these, of course, have 
always regarded this transaction (as it really 
is as the beginning of that act of outwardly 
covenanting with the Lord which is still the 
act of all who separate themselves from the 
world to unite with the Church. 

Second. God's design in requiring his peo- 
ple to enter into covenant with himself in an 
external manner was to form the company of 
believers into a visible, external Church as 
an aggregate of families. This statement is 
involved in the explanation just given of the 
origin of the covenanting. At first circum- 

cuincision on the eighth clay was but the seal and badge 
of an already-existing church membership. 



48 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

cision was enjoined, but under the new dis- 
pensation the badge of the covenant, or of 
church membership, is baptism. 

The true invisible Church is kept in exist- 
ence by the inward embracing of the gospel 
covenant by men when they exercise faith, 
but the Church, considered as visible and 
organized, is continued in existence by that 
outward covenanting with Christ to believe 
and obey him which we witness when we 
behold persons joining themselves to the 
body of professors. And when baptism is 
administered to such persons, it marks them 
not as certainly believers, but as those who 
profess to be believers. It appears, then, that 
the end to be secured by the covenanting 
with the Lord Jesus externally and before 
witnesses is to perpetuate the visible Church. 
With the Lord Jesus, we say ; for even the 
outward visible covenanting is to be looked 
upon as taking place rather between Christ 
and professors than between God, as God, 
and professors. 

For if the Lord Jesus is our Mediator, it 
devolves upon him to administer the benefits 
of the eternal covenant of grace, the con- 
ditions of which he has fulfilled. But in 



THESE EITTLE ONES. 49 

order that he may fully administer them, He 
must be that Person of the Trinity whose 
work it is to enact with men that covenant 
by which they visibly engage to rely solely 
on the Saviour's merits and to be obedient 
to his voice. 

Even under the old dispensation it was 
Jehovah, the second Person, who adminis- 
tered the benefits of the redemption which 
in the fullness of time were to be purchased 
by himself. He began to dispense them 
when, immediately after the fall, he revealed 
the glorious gospel truth, '* The seed of the 
woman shall bruise the serpent's head.'' He 
continued after this to dispense them in all 
the ways by which he carried on the work of 
the Church's redemption. We know this to 
be the exact truth, because, when we read the 
Old Testament, we find that the very Jeho- 
vah who so often appeared and spoke to men, 
and instructed, guided and commanded his 
people, was at the same time the "Sent" of 
God. He was, then, not the first but the sec- 
ond Person of the Trinity. It was He who 
had undertaken the office of Mediator who 
administered the affairs of the Church before 
the advent. 

4 



50 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

Remember, then, believer, not only that 
all Christians renew their covenant with 
Christ whenever they partake of the Lord's 
Supper, but that it is with Him that all enact 
a covenant when, in the beginning of their 
Christian course, they receive the seal and 
badge of baptism. And it is by means of 
this covenanting with him by baptism ex- 
ternally and before witnesses that his vis- 
ible Church is perpetuated. 

Third. It is this external covenanting, or, 
in other words, this personal professing re- 
ligion or piety, and not the actual possession 
of religion or piety, which is the condition 
of visible church membership as far as adults 
are concerned. 

What is meant by this is that applicants 
for church membership are not received into 
the church because church officers are con- 
fident of their piety upon examining them, 
but because church officers are bound by 
God's command to accept their profession of 
piety or religion, provided that profession is 
credible. The Holy Spirit tells as that the 
jailer of Philippi believed as soon as Jesus 
was preached unto him, but that does not 
prove that the aj^ostle himself felt certain of 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 51 

it. As Paul could not read the hearts of 
people, he could not be absolutely sure that 
the jailer had become a new creature; but 
he accepted the man's profession of faith 
and baptized him on the ground of it ; and 
had he not done so, he would have diso- 
beyed Christ. He had no choice about the 
matter. 

When ministers administer baptism to 
adults who are desirous of professing pub- 
licly their faith in Christ, it is with the full un- 
derstanding on the part of the ministers them- 
selves and of all the spectators that they 
cannot read the hearts of the applicants. 
And yet, for all that, God has expressly com- 
manded them to place his badge of church 
membership upon applicants whose profes- 
sion is simply credible. God might himself 
have set the mark or badge of membership 
on people, placing it only on those who in 
his sight are regenerated by the Holy Spirit 
and exercise true faith, and in that case none 
in the world would receive baptism but true 
Christians. But instead of himself doing 
this, he appoints fallible men to perform the 
act, who, because they are men and have no 
power to discern what is going on within the 



52 THESE LITTLE OXES. 

soul of another, cannot possibly be sure that 
they whom they receive as church members 
are true believers. 

Thus we are required to regard and treat 
persons making a credible profession as Chris- 
tians. With all our uncertainty about their 
inward state, if, having competent knowledge, 
they profess to trust in the Saviour and their 
profession is credible, we sin against God un- 
less we treat them as brethren. But if their 
walk and conversation are clearly inconsistent 
with the possession of piety, their profession 
is not credible. So that, although w r e may 
have secret doubts of the piety of applicants 
for church membership — secret doubts that 
they belong to the invisible Church — we have 
no right, because of these secret doubts, to 
refuse to receive them into the visible Church 
by allowing them externally to covenant with 
Christ, so long as they have competent know- 
ledge and are guilty of nothing plainly incon- 
sistent with the possession of piety. Surely, 
if we often have to admit that we fail to give 
evidence of our own piety satisfactory to our 
own minds, and yet think it right to remain 
in the visible Church, w r e ought not to demand 
of others evidence of regeneration absolutely 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 53 

and unquestionably satisfactory to ourselves 
as the condition of church membership. 
God gives us no permission to do it ; and be- 
sides, should any church make the attempt 
thus to separate the tares from the wheat, it 
would be impossible for them to succeed, since 
to no set of men has power ever been given 
to read the heart. " It is the duty of church 
officers to examine the applicant as to his 
knowledge, to watch and inquire concerning 
his walk and conversation, to set before him 
faithfully the inward spiritual qualifications 
requisite for acceptable communion, and to 
hear his profession of that spiritual faith and 
purpose. The responsibility of the act 

THEN RESTS UPON THE INDIVIDUAL PRO- 
FESSOR, and not upon the session, who are 
never to be understood as passing judgment 
upon the validity of his evidence." 

Of course it is not meant that the duty of 
the ministers and elders to the applicants is 
wholly discharged when they have admitted 
them to communion. Would they but visit, 
watch over, encourage, instruct, guide and 
pray with those whom they may have ad- 
mitted with misgivings, they would be re- 
warded by witnessing the establishment of 



54 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

the new members in the faith ; and should 
they even receive some to communion in an 
unconverted state, the real conversion of such 
new communicants would almost certainly be 
the result of their faithfulness. 

Fourth. We have seen what the condition 
of church membership is as far as adults are 
concerned — that it is the profession of per- 
sonal faith. But we maintain that some in- 
fants are members of the visible Church, and 
what is the condition of their church mem- 
bership? 

We answer, Not their giving us evidence 
that they are regenerated. JSTor is it a pro- 
fession of religion in their own persons or 
'a profession of personal faith such as is re- 
quired of adults. But the condition of infant 
church membership is the filial relation to a 
parent who professes the true religion. This 
we expect to show in the following chapter. 

Briefly, we understand the Scriptures to 
teach that the child is represented in the 
parent — that the parent acts for the child ; so 
that whenever he enters into covenant with 
God for himself, he enter into covenant in 
behalf of his child also, and the child is to be 
regarded and treated as though he had done 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 55 

in his own person what his parent did in his 
name. It follows from this that if a parent 
becomes a member of the visible Church by- 
making a profession of religion, his chil- 
dren have the right to be recognized as 
church members, since they are to be re- 
garded and treated as included in their 
parent's act until they are old enough to 
act for themselves. 

From all this it is plain that the condition 
of visible infant church membership is, as 
was said, the filial relation to a parent who 
professes faith in Christ. This would not be 
a true representation of the case did the 
Scriptures require us to adopt the principle 
that men can only make a profession for 
themselves. This, however, is not the prin- 
ciple taught in the Bible. It everywhere 
teaches just the opposite. Under the old 
dispensation, whenever any foreigner became 
a Jew, his children, by God's command, be- 
came Jews. Here the principle is recognized 
that the parent in covenanting with God acts 
as the representative of his child. It is be- 
cause Christian Churches still act on this 
principle that Christian Churches (with one 
exception) teach that the children of those 



56 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

who profess Christ are born within the 
Church — that when one lays hold of the 
covenant of grace for himself, his children 
are to be regarded as doing the same thing. 
While, therefore, the Church requires an 
adult to make a credible profession of per- 
sonal faith as the condition of becoming 
a church member, the condition of infant 
church membership is the filial relation to 
a parent who makes such a profession. 

Let it be borne in mind, then, that when 
we undertake to prove in the following pages 
that the infants of professors are members 
of the visible Church, we do not undertake 
to prove that they are actually regenerated. 
We only contend that they are included in 
that class who are by divine command to be 
regarded as embraced in the covenant and 
treated as such — in other words, that they 
belong to that class of persons who are to 
be regarded and treated by the church as 
church members. 



Our argument for the church member- 
ship of infants is that by divine command 
the children of believing parents were in- 
cluded in the Church of old. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE FIRST STEP IN THE ARGUMENT. 

Some maintain that the Church of God 
under the old dispensation was in no sense 
a spiritual society. They maintain that the 
condition of membership in it was by no 
means any engagement to exercise faith and 
to fulfill similar inward spiritual duties — that, 
on the contrary, the condition was nothing 
more than birth as an Israelite, with the 
promise to perform ceremonial and other ex- 
ternal observances. Hence the Church of the 
old dispensation and that of the new are two 
entirely different societies or churches, so that, 
even if infants were members of the Old 
Testament Church, it does not follow that 
they should be recognized as members of 
the Church of the new dispensation. 

It is not denied by these persons that there 

57 



58 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

have always been believers in the world. 
They admit that before Abraham's day many 
received the promise of redemption by faith, 
and that not only the patriarch himself, but 
multitudes of his descendants also, were true 
believers. But they insist that that visible 
society which owed its origin to the Abra- 
hamic covenant, and which was the Church of 
the old economy, was altogether distinct from 
the Church which has existed since the time 
of Christ; and from this alleged dissimilarity 
they draw the conclusion in reference to the 
ecclesiastical status of children mentioned 
above. 

We are, therefore, called on to prove. Afi 

THE EIEST STEP IX OUE ARGUMENT, that 

the visible Church of the old dispensation is 
the same as that of the new dispensation — 
that the visible Church which exists in these 
New Testament times is but the continuation 
of the Old Testament Church. 

Under the old economy every Jew was a 
member of the visible Church. Whether he 
inwardly and with his heart embraced the 
Abrahamic covenant none could tell; it was 
to do so which constituted him 
a visible Church member. Under the new 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 59 

dispensation that which makes any one a 
member of the visible Church is his profess- 
ing to embrace the covenant of grace. Now, 
this being so, we have only to show that the 
covenant with Abraham, as it was professed 
to be embraced by the ancient Jew, is the 
same thing with the covenant of grace, as 
professed to be embraced by baptized persons 
of our day, in order to prove the identity of 
the Church under both dispensations. For 
if that which determines the nature of the 
visible Church is the nature of the covenant 
which her members publicly profess to enter 
into with God, then, if that covenant is ex- 
actly the same in any two given periods of 
the Church's history, it follows that in these 
two periods of her history the visible Church 
herself must be the same. 

A multitude of people in the world have 
been by the command of the Lord Jesus 
organized into a body which we call the 
visible Church. That which distinguishes 
it is that all its members profess faith in 
Jesus as their Saviour, and obedience to him. 
Tii is is the covenant which they profess that 
they have entered into with Christ their Lord 
in the secrecy of their souls. Every adult 



60 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

applicant is received into this company — the 
visible Church— simply on the ground of 
his profession, provided it is credible. The 
agreement or covenant within the soul to 
trust in Jesus, being an inward spiritual 
act, is not, of course, between the applicant 
and the visible Church into which he is ad- 
mitted, but between the applicant and Christ 
himself; and all that the Church does is to 
accept the applicant's profession that he has 
inwardly entered into covenant with Christ 
and place upon him the badge — the badge 
of baptism, which is also a seal. Some 
of these members of the visible Church ex- 
isting in the world have never had any true 
faith — have never really inwardly covenant- 
ed with Christ — i. e., accepted of him as their 
Saviour — and such are not what they profess 
to be; and yet, if their profession is credible, 
the Church did right in receiving them, since 
it only acted in accordance with Christ's com- 
mand. 

Now, we have affirmed that the visible 
Church of the new dispensation is identical 
with the visible Church (founded on the 
Abrahamic covenant) which existed before 
the advent of Christ, because the covenant 



THESE LITTLE OXES. 61 

which is professed to be embraced by the 
Church of the new dispensation is the same 
Abrahamic covenant which the Church of 
old professed to accept. Under the new dis- 
pensation that which constitutes a person a 
member of the visible Church is that pub- 
lic act which any one performs when he pro- 
fesses to embrace in his soul the covenant 
promising salvation to believers — i. e., the 
covenant of grace. But this very covenant 
was the one which was placed by God before 
Abraham and the Jews of old for their ac- 
ceptance, and the professing to embrace which 
made them church members. 

Thus it is evident that, in seeking to estab- 
lish the proposition that the Clnwch under 
both dispensations is identical, the thing de- 
volving upon us is to prove that the Cove- 
nant between God and believers, as professed 
to be embraced by those who unite with the 
visible Church under both dispensations, is 
identical. AYe have, however, a few words 
to add before presenting the Scripture proof 
of the identity of this covenant. 



62 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

A FEW WORDS CONCERNING THE COVENANT 
AS ORIGINALLY ENACTED, AND ALSO CON- 
CERNING ITS RE-ENACTMENT WITH THE 
ISRAELITES. 

In the covenant which Christ made with 
Abraham he promised the patriarch that his 
descendants should be very numerous, that 
he would give them the land of Canaan for 
a possession, and that he would be their na- 
tional God and make them his peculiar peo- 
ple ; and, above all, as the Scripture proof, 
which we shall present in the sequel, will 
show, he promised spiritual and eternal bless- 
ings to both the patriarch and his descend- 
ants on condition of faith. 

And what did Abraham, on his part, prom- 
ise? By being circumcised when he embraced 
the covenant he promised to take God to be 
his God, and to believe in Jehovah's decla- 
ration that he would make his descendants 
numerous and give them the land of Canaan. 
And we expect also, before this chapter is fin- 
ished, to make it clear that he promised and 
professed faith in Christ as his Redeemer. 

All this is said about the patriarch, but 
what is said about his household? We are 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 63 

taught that they also signified their assent 
to the terms of this covenant by being cir- 
cumcised — in other words, that they made 
the very same promise and profession of be- 
lief and obedience which the patriarch him- 
self made. They were visibly (inasmuch as 
they were circumcised) included in the cove- 
nant. The position of Abraham's son Ish- 
mael was not exactly the same as that of 
Isaac. He had no interest in the promise 
of the land of Canaan, being from any por- 
tion of that inheritance expressly excluded. 
And since he was not to inherit the land of 
Canaan, he was not called on to profess his 
belief that God would give it to him. But 
as far as the spiritual aspect of the covenant 
is concerned, he also was visibly included in 
the covenant, for he too received the seal of 
the righteousness of faith. He also was a 
professor of the true religion ; and if he real- 
ly did what he professed to do — that is, if he 
really exercised saving faith — he is now in 
heaven no less than Abraham and Isaac. 
Ishmael's case shows that, since circumcision 
was administered to those who were denied 
all share in the national privileges of the 
children of Abraham, it (circumcision) by no 



64 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

means had sole reference to the national cov- 
enant, but also had reference, and even pri- 
mary and special reference, to the spiritual 
covenant. 

By this transaction between Christ and 
Abraham he and his household were con- 
stituted the visible Church ; and though the 
world's population was very great, yet none 
then living belonged to the visible Church 
except Abraham's household. There may 
have been saints or believers in the country 
from which the patriarch came, and there 
may have been a few hidden believers in the 
land of Canaan, but they were not in the 
visible Church in the sense in which Abra- 
ham and his family were in it. 

THE JEWS AT MOUNT SINAI W r ERE FORMED 
INTO A COMMONWEALTH, BUT THEY WERE 
STILL A CHURCH. 

Abraham represented his posterity, and 
therefore not only the members of his house- 
hold, who were his contemporaries, but all his 
descendants, were regarded as making the same 
profession of obedience and faith which he 
himself made. This applies to the Hebrews, 
his descendants, whom many years afterward 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 65 

we find in the wilderness under the leader- 
ship of Moses. God at that time gave them, 
through Moses, a code of laws called the Mo- 
saic law, thereby constituting them a com- 
monwealth. He condescended to become 
their King. He was from that time to rule 
them not merely, as he does all nations, with 
a providential sway, but " he was to fill that 
place in their political system which is filled 
in other states by human sovereigns." He 
was to appoint their rulers. The Hebrew 
state during all the time of its existence had 
human magistrates, but the people were not 
regarded as bearing distinct relations to the 
magistrate and to God : all their obligations 
were to God. The commonwealth was a 
theocracy. The code of laws which God 
enacted for them embraced their civil, na- 
tional, social, personal and religious duties. 
Those enactments of this Mosaic law which 
regulated their religious duties required ser- 
vices and observances of them which none 
could render except men who professed faith 
in the Redeemer to come, and thus the laws 
by which the nation was governed recognized 
the nation's Church character, and even as- 
sumed that it was a Church resting on the Abra- 

5 



66 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

hamie covenant. The reward promised for 
keeping outwardly — L e., in the external life — 
the Mosaic law, was temporal prosperity, se- 
curity, fruitful seasons, etc. Should any man 
be seen by the omniscient God to be destitute 
of a true faith, such a one could have no 
well-founded hope of salvation; nevertheless, 
while the want of saving faith w r ould be at- 
tended with the loss of spiritual blessings, 
it would not deprive those destitute of it of 
temporal and national benefits, provided they 
rendered an external obedience to the Mo- 
saic law. So Jong as external obedience was 
faithfully rendered they were also, freely ad- 
mitted, independently of their inward spirit- 
ual condition (and of course their real spirit- 
ual condition could not be discerned by their 
fellow-men), to the services of the temple, to 
the Passover, and to all the sacred festivals 
and typical institutions of their dispensation ; 
and when guilty of offences against the laws 
of the theocracy, upon offering the sacrifices 
appointed and complying with certain cere- 
monial requisitions, the external disabilities 
to which their offences had subjected them 
were removed, even though in the sight of 
God they were not true penitents, and so 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 67 

were not savingly interested in Christ's sal- 
vation. 

Thus we see that, although the kingdom of 
God under the old dispensation was a com- 
monwealth, yet it was a Church as well. 
"The people were a Church in the form of a 
nation. The great promise was the redemp- 
tion of the world by the Messiah. To this 
everything else w r as subordinate. The main 
design of the constitution of the Hebrews as 
a distinct nation, and of their separation from 
all other people, was to keep alive the prom- 
ise of the covenant — i. e., the promise of sal- 
vation through Christ." The Israelites were 
regarded as having already made a profession 
of embracing that covenant before the trans- 
action between God and them at Mount Si- 
nai. As was said, Abraham represented his 
descendants, so that his act of covenanting 
with God was regarded as theirs. They 
were, therefore, assumed to be already in cov- 
enant with Jehovah and professors of the 
true religion, only at Mount Sinai there was 
a re-enacting of the covenant which they had 
already professedly embraced. At the same 
time, as we have seen, God attached to it the 
code of laws, called the Mosaic law, which 



68 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

constituted them a state or commonwealth. 
Nevertheless, the Mosaic law did not give 
birth to the Hebrew nation, whether we look 
at it as a nation or a Church. The Hebrew 
Church and nation were originated by the 
Abrahamic covenant. This is what we also 
affirm of the Church of the new dispensa- 
tion. It rests on the same covenant on which 
the Church of old was built — that, namely, 
which Christ formed with Abraham — a cov- 
enant promising salvation on condition of 
faith. And as the Church must always be 
the same while the covenant on which it rests 
is the same, the Old Testament Church and 
the New Testament Church are identical. 

It is true that the present dispensation is a 
different dispensation from that which the 
Old Testament Church was under. What 
this means it is important to know. Many, 
even educated people, have not sufficiently 
attended to the true meaning of the word 
" dispensation." By the old (or Mosaic) dis- 
pensation we mean the old mode of dispensing 
saving blessings and gifts to the Church. By 
the new dispensation is meant that mode of 
dispensing such blessings to the Church which 
has taken the place of the old mode. There 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 69 

has, then, been a change, but it has not affect- 
ed his Church as to its essence, nor have 
the benefits and blessings been changed from 
what they were. " Modes and forms of dis- 
pensation do not affect the substance of the 
things dispensed." We repeat it, therefore, 
that the Church under both dispensations is 
the same, because the covenant remains un- 
changed. 

Having offered these remarks on the po- 
sition in which Abraham and his descend- 
ants were placed by the original enacting, 
and afterward by the re-enacting, of the cov- 
enant, we are ready for the scriptural proofs 
afforded by the New Testament writers that 
the covenant between God and believers is 
the same under both dispensations. 

In one of its aspects the covenant which 
God made with the patriarch was a nation- 
al one. God promised, as we have already 
shown, that he would constitute his descend- 
ants his own people, give them the land of 
Canaan for a habitation, and make them, as 
far as temporal benefits were concerned, the 
objects of his special favor. And many in- 
sist that the divine promise went no farther 
They strenuously contend that it is an entire 



70 THESE EITTLE ONES. 

mistake to suppose that Jehovah, when he 
made a covenant with Abraham, intended 
to promise him and his descendants spiritual 
blessings on condition of faith and obedience. 
And of course they deny that the kingdom 
of God, under the old dispensation built on 
this covenant, was one and the same Church 
with the New Testament Church. 

WHAT THE NEW TESTAMENT WAITERS SAY. 

The New Testament writers, however, 
teach that the covenant set before Abra- 
ham and the Jewish people for their ac- 
ceptance, and which they all professed to 
embrace, did not simply offer national and 
temporal blessings on condition of faith in 
the divine promise to bestow r such blessings, 
but did also and mainly offer the blessings 
of redemption on condition of faith in the 
Redeemer to come, and was, therefore, the 
covenant of grace. 

Paul, for example, teaches that the cove- 
nant with Abraham was the covenant of 
grace when, writing to the Galatians (chap, 
iii.), he proves to them the doctrine of justi- 
fication by faith. 

The Galatians, of course, earnestly desired 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 71 

salvation, but they were bent on seeking it 
by works — i. e., by a strict adherence to the 
Mosaic ritual law given at Mount Sinai four 
hundred and thirty years after Abraham's 
day, but which, when the Redeemer was cru- 
cified, was abrogated. Paul admits that if 
salvation is not by faith it must be by works, 
because there are only these two methods of 
being saved ; but he tells the Galatians that 
it is by faith, and by faith only, that they 
can be saved, and he brings forward as a 
strong argument God's covenant with Abra- 
ham. He says that to faithful Abraham — 
that is, to Abraham exercising faith — and 
also to those Gentiles who should believe, 
no less than to the Jews, God in covenant 
gave the inheritance (salvation) by promise 
of pure grace, and in no other way, and that 
that is inconsistent with salvation being ob- 
tained by works of any kind, since, "if the 
inheritance or salvation be of the law, it is 
no more of promise." Gal. iii. 18. It (viz., 
the covenant with Abraham, by the terms of 
which he and all the nations of the earth 
were promised a free salvation by faith) was 
inconsistent with the bestowment of salvation 
on the ground of obedience to the ceremo- 



72 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

nial law, unless the ceremonial law had power 
to disannul the Abrahamic covenant. This, 
however, the apostle declares is impossible. 
Even a human covenant, if it be ratified, can- 
not be disannulled or added to. Of course, 
then, the covenant [with Abraham] that was 
confirmed before of God in Christ, the law 
which was four hundred and thirty years 
after, cannot disannul that it should make 
the promise of none effect. Gal. iii. 17. 

By thus showing the Galatians that the 
Abrahamic covenant was the covenant of 
grace, and by reminding them that it could 
not be annulled, the apostle proves to them 
the uselessness of seeking salvation through 
obedience to the law. 

Since, then, the Abrahamic covenant was 
the covenant of grace, and since that which 
made a man a member of the Old Testa- 
ment Church was his professing to embrace 
the Abrahamic covenant, it follows that all 
Old Testament Church members were visi- 
ble Church members in consequence of pro- 
fessing to embrace the covenant of grace. 
Therefore the Old Testament Church and the 
New Testament Church are the same Church. 

We only partly describe the Abrahamic 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 73 

covenant when we say that it was a prom- 
ise to give the patriarch and those whom he 
represented salvation on condition of faith in 
a coming Redeemer. It was also a promise 
to give free salvation to people of every sta- 
tion and clime and color on condition of 
faith in Jesus, and that to the very end of 
time. You cannot, therefore, fully explain 
the Abraham ic covenant without your very 
explanation involving the idea that from 
Abraham's day to the end of time, the Church 
must always be the same. 

Read carefully the argument in the third 
chapter of Galatians, which we have thus 
partially presented, and you will see that the 
apostle teaches not only that the thing prom- 
ised was that inheritance the author of which 
is Christ and the condition of participating in 
which is faith, but also that the thing prom- 
ised, is the inheritance of which all nations 
are the heirs, and not the Jews only. 

When we ask, What was the covenant set 
before Abraham and his descendants, and 
which by being circumcised they professed 
to embrace? the answer is, The very same 
which we profess to embrace at the time we 
receive baptism, when we declare before men 



74 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

that we rest on Christ alone for salvation as 
he is offered in the gospel. This is the teach- 
ing of Paul's words to the Galatians above 
quoted (Gal. iii. 15-18). And his words in 
the thirteenth and fourteenth verses of the 
fourth chapter to the Romans contain the 
same teaching. 

The apostle wished to convince the Ro- 
mans that we are justified not by works of 
law, but by faith only. And to convince 
them of it he tells them expressly that this 
was the meaning of the terms of the cove- 
nant announced to Abraham. The covenant 
promise to the patriarch was conditioned on 
faith. That promise cannot now, therefore, 
consistently with the divine fidelity, be made 
to depend on obedience to the law, but must 
also in our case depend on the condition that 
we have faith. Certainly, says the apostle, 
we are saved by faith, and not by works of 
law, for, in the case of Abraham, the prom- 
ise that he should be the heir of the world 
was not to him or to his seed through the 
law, but through the righteousness of faith. 
So that now, if they which are of the law 
be heirs, faith is made void and the promise 
made of none effect. Paul could not in this 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 70 

way have argued for justification by faith 
alone from the covenant set before Abraham 
and the ancient Jewish people for their ac- 
ceptance if that covenant had not been the 
covenant of grace — i. e., had not promised 
salvation on condition of faith instead of 
merely promising national benefits. 

The promise to Abraham, then, was of 
faith. "And it was of faith in order that 
it might be sure to all the seed — to all his 
spiritual children, whether Jews or Gentiles. 
For the paternity of Abraham extends fai 
beyond the Jews. He is the father of all 
who believe. This, says the apostle, was the 
tenor of the original covenant. This was the 
very thing which God intended when he said, 
'I will make thee a father of manv nations/ 
The terms of the covenant with Abraham 
were not one thing and the gospel of Jesus 
Christ another: they are one and the same; 
and therefore, in order to be saved, we must 
embrace the covenant made with Abraham." 
And it is required of us that we profess to 
embrace it, so that, making the same profes- 
sion which the Jews did, we and they are 
members of the same visible Church. 

The covenant, then, with Abraham, on 



76 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

which the Church of the old dispensation 
rested, was the covenant of grace. Its call 
to the sons of men, therefore, was the same 
as that which we now recognize as the gospel 
call: " Believe on the Lamb of God — only 
believe — and salvation is yours." The cov- 
enant, however, bore the visible sign and seal 
of circumcision, and its whole declaration was, 
" He that believeth and is circumcised shall 
be saved." Still, circumcision did not sustain 
the same relation to salvation that faith sus- 
tained ; for as we know that some now are 
saved who have never been baptized, so we 
cannot doubt that formerly some reached 
heaven who were never circumcised. 

That the visible Church of the old dis- 
pensation, like that of the new, was built 
on the profession of faith in the religion of 
the gospel is evident from the apostle's dec- 
laration in Gal. iii. 8 : And the scripture, 
foreseeing that God would justify the heathen 
through faith, preached before the gospel unto 
Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be 
blessed. Here Paul represents the covenant 
with the patriarch to be the very gospel 
which has come to us. Is it not strange 
that, notwithstanding such explanatory dec- 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 77 

larations of the New Testament writers, there 
are those who can insist that the Abrahamic 
covenant was merely national and entirely 
distinct from the covenant of grace? But 
we know why they have adopted this view 
of the subject. It is because it cannot be 
denied that infants were included in the cov- 
enant made with Abraham, from which it fol- 
lows that if that covenant was the covenant 
of grace, the covenant of grace includes 
infants — in other words, that they can be 
church members and the sign of church 
membership can be administered to them. 

We see from many passages in the Acts 
of the Apostles — as Acts iii. 25, 26; Acts xiii. 
32, 33; Acts xxvi. 6, 7 — that the apostles ex- 
plain the promise of the Abrahamic covenant 
contained in Gen. xii. 3; Gen. xviii. 18; Gen. 
xxii. 18; Gen. xxvi. 4; and Gen. xxviii. 14 
to be the promise of Christ. This promise, 
in fact, fills the Old Testament. No wonder 
that those who were Israelites indeed, confi- 
dently expected Christ and waited for the 
salvation of Israel. These interpreted the 
covenant which God made with Abraham 
as promising pardon and the favor of God on 
condition of faith, and they professed to exer- 



<8 THE.SE LITTLE ONE-. 

eise this faith. As. thereibre. we profess the 
same faith and look f 

:h: L -"-■.;:.-! : : our day and that of the old 
d:-; ;-:>;.:: : :: are one and the same. 

We have an instance :u: Jew's in- 

terpreting the A: 'enant to be a 

covenant promising Christ and re 
in the exultant song of the father of the 
forerunner: B'^s-s-sd A :'.■; B:-:d AA f Is- 
rael, for he hath visited and redeemed his peo- 
ple, mid hath raised up a horn of sale 

s in the house of his servant David; as 
he spate by the mouth of his holy prophets . . . 
to perform the mercy promised to our fathers 
xember his holy covenant ; the 
oath which he swaee to our father 
Abraham, that he would grant unto us that 
tee, bek red out of the hand of our ene- 

c::\d r'/'d\:-::>\isr^:ss \ 

Ufe. The original and fundamental, the 
central and all-pervading, promise was that 
of a personal Saviour. The Old Testament 
gospel was that such a Saviour should come. 
The gospel of the IVew Testament is that 
he has come. or. as Paul expresses it in the 
synagogue of Antioeh. TA dod r ir>; i : :>do you 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 79 

glad tidings how that the promise which was 
made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the 
same unto us their children, in that he hath 
raised up Jesus again. 

As we have said, this promise fills the Old 
Testament. a The whole of the Old Testa- 
ment is nothing more than a record of the 
historical development of the promise, 'In 
thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be. 
blessed/ " 

"The introduction of the heathen into the 
covenant of God tvith Abraham, in relation to 
his seed, was clearly predicted. The proph- 
ets rejoiced when they saw the nations flock- 
ing like clouds or as doves, not to the narrow 
enclosure of Judaism, but to the broad field 
of the Abrahamic covenant — when they saw 
even Ethiopia and the isles of the sea stretch- 
ing out their hands to the long-promised seed. 
And the apostles take up the same strain and 
tell the people — Gentiles and Jews — that God 
had fulfilled the covenant made with Abra- 
ham in that he had raised up his Son Jesus 
and sent him to bless them. 

" In the New Testament, therefore, the 
constant representation is that the Gentiles are 
made fellow-citizens of the saints and of the 



80 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

household of God ; they are introduced, not 
into the covenant from Mount Sinai, but into 
the earlier, broader covenant made with the 
fathers. They were not planted as a new 
tree, but grafted into the old stock. They 
did not bear the root, but the root them." 

THE CHURCH UNDER BOTH DISPENSATIONS 
THE SAME OLIVE TREE. 

It is plain, from the apostle's discussion of 
the great question concerning the rejection of 
the Jews, the vocation of the Gentiles and 
the future restoration of the Jews, that the 
Church under both dispensations is the same 
olive tree. Kom. ii. 17-24. To borrow 
the energetic words of Dr. Mason in his 
essay on the Church of God: "What was 
the l good olive tree' from which the Jewish 
branches were i broken off/ while the Gen- 
tiles were grafted in ? Evidently, the visible 
Church organized under the covenant made 
with Abraham. There was no other from 
which the Jews could be cast off. The cere- 
monial law was superseded. It was no ex- 
cision at all to be cut off from a Church 
which did not exist, nor could the Gentiles 
be introduced into it. But what says the 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 81 

apostle? That the i olive tree' was cvi down 
or rooted up? That it had withered, trunk 
and branch? Or was no longer under the 
care of the divine Planter? Nothing like 
it ! He asserts the continuance of the olive 
tree in life and vigor, the excision of some 
worthless branches and the insertion of new 
ones in their stead. 'Thou/ says he, address- 
ing the Gentile, 'partakest of the root and 
fatness of the olive tree/ Translate this into 
less figurative language, and what is the im- 
port? That the Church of God, his visi- 
ble Church, taken into peculiar relations to 
himself by the Abrahamic covenant, subsists 
without injury through the change of dispen- 
sation and of members. Branches, indeed, 
may be cut off, but the rooted trunk stands 
firm, and other branches occupy the places of 
those which are lopped away. The Jews were 
cast out of the Church, but the Church per- 
ished not with them. There was still left the 
trunk of the olive tree; there was still fatness 
in its roots ; it stands in the same fertile soil, 
the covenant of God ; and the admission of 
the Gentiles into the room of the excommu- 
nicated Jews makes them a part of that cov- 
enanted Church, as branches grafted into the 

6 



82 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

olive tree and flourishing in its fatness are 
identified with the tree. It is impossible for 
ideas conceived in the mind of man or uttered 
in his language to assert more peremptorily 
the continuance of the Church under that 
very covenant which was established with 
Abraham and his seed." 

The jailer of Philippi, the eunuch whose 
question was, "What doth hinder me to be 
baptized ?" and all others who by their own 
desire are received into the Church, promise 
faith and obedience to Christ. But the mem- 
bers of the Old Testament Church made the 
same promise and profession. This being the 
case, that Church was as truly a spiritual so- 
ciety as is the New Testament Church. This 
is by some denied. They contend that it was 
merely an external society, membership in 
which depended on natural birth, and not at 
all on an engagement to discharge inward 
spiritual duties. We have sufficiently con- 
sidered the views of these objectors. 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 83 



CHRIST S KINGDOM IS THE SAME AS THE 
CHURCH OF OLD, NOTWITHSTANDING IT 
IS NOW DISTINCT FROM THE STATE. 

There are, however, others who are willing 
to admit that the kingdom of God before the 
advent consisted of professors of the true re- 
ligion, but who urge that, since it was also 
a State and had a national character, it is 
wrong to call it exactly the same Church as 
that of the new dispensation. It is not now, 
as it then was, a Church and a nation at the 
same time. How, then, can it now be exact- 
ly what it was of old ? Membership did, in- 
deed, depend upon the profession of the 
soul's faith in Christ as a Saviour, but per- 
sons had likewise to promise the performance 
of ceremonial observances and of the duties 
of national citizenship, whereas, in New Tes- 
tament times, only the profession of faith in 
Jesus and promise of allegiance to him are 
required. 

This objection would be sound if it really 
followed, as a consequence of the disappear- 
ance of the Church's national aspect, that its 
essence was at once changed. You are a per- 



84 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

son, consisting of son] and body. When you 
die you drop the body, and only your soul 
remains, but, for all that, you are exactly 
the same person you were before, because 
your personality resides, not in your body, 
but in your soul. In like manner, the es- 
sence of the Church of old did not reside 
in those things belonging to it in virtue of 
which it had a national character; and there- 
fore, though at the advent everything pertain- 
ing to it which had constituted it a national 
society, a commonwealth, disappeared, it nev- 
ertheless continued to be the same Church it 
had been before the coming of Christ. 

Though the Bible does not distinguish two 
Abraham ic covenants, yet we may make the 
distinction if we do so merely for the sake of 
perspicuity and convenience. We may say 
that there was a spiritual covenant relating 
to Christ and a national covenant relating 
to the possession of the land of Canaan. 
Now, let us not so confound the Church, built 
on the spiritual covenant, with the nation, 
which rested on the national covenant, as to 
say that the Church in these New Testament 
times is of a different nature from the Old 
Testament Church. This would betray a 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 85 

strange confusion of ideas. Let us not fall 
into the error of supposing that when the 
new dispensation began, the Church itself dis- 
appeared because its framework was removed. 
The Hebrew commonwealth and ritual were 
indeed abolished, but the Church did not dis- 
appear ; it did not come to an end. It re- 
mained. Looking at the kingdom of God as 
it existed before the advent, we see a " Church 
in the form of a nation f but its being this 
did not hinder its finding its own continuance 
in the Church which has existed since the 
advent, even though since the advent noth- 
ing of the national character which once per- 
tained to it has been perpetuated. It not 
only remained after its old form had disap- 
peared, but, we had almost said, it became 
the Church more intensely than ever. Un- 
der the old dispensation it was in a state of 
tutelage; it was burdened with a hierarchy 
and a pompous ritual ; it was restricted to 
one nation ; but when Christ came, its tram- 
mels were thrown off. It became capable of 
unlimited enlargement. The Gentiles were 
at once introduced into the covenant made 
with the fathers, and became fellow-citizens 
of the saints and of the household of God. 



86 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

Thus the Church continued to be the same 
notwithstanding its old form went out of ex- 
istence. The change in it which took place 
upon its losing its national character w r as not 
an essential one ; it was only accidental. In 
fact, its own preservation in that age of the 
world was just the end contemplated in its 
having the national form, which until the 
advent of Christ it possessed. 

Our heavenly Father w T as intent on hav- 
ing the true religion preserved until Christ 
should come. His way of doing this was to 
make " his nation a Church and his Church 
a nation." But w r hen Christ came, this wall 
of partition between the Jews and Gentiles 
was broken dow 7 n in order that all nations 
might be embraced in the Church, according 
to what Paul says : Is he the God of the Jews 
only ? Is he not also of the Gentiles f Yes, 
of the Gentiles also.* Surely a change, the 
only object and result of which was to re- 
move limitations and introduce men of all 
nations into the fold, cannot make the Church, 
since the coming of Christ, different from the 
Church of the old dispensation. There hav- 
ing been no change in the covenant, the 
* Rom. iii. 29. 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 87 

Church under both dispensations is iden- 
tical. 

In the next chapter it is proved that infants 
were members of the Church of the old dis- 
pensation by God's command. 



CHAPTER IV. 

SECOND STEP OF THE ARGUMENT. —THE AN- 
SWERS TO THIS ARGUMENT WHICH HAVE 
BEEN ATTEMPTED, SHOWN TO BE INCON- 
CLUSIVE. — THE CONCLUSION REACHED. 

It was shown in the preceding chapter 
that the Church under the old dispensation 
and the Church under the new dispensation 
are one and the same Church. We advance 
now a step farther, and maintain that infants 
were members of the Church under the old 
dispensation. 

Abraham's circumcision confirmed to him 
the fact that God regarded and treated him 
as righteous in the sight of the law. This 
is the sense in which it was a seal. When 
a document is drawn up for two parties to a 
contract to sign, a seal is affixed to the doc- 
ument, and its intent is to show that upon 
each party the contract is binding. Abra- 
ham's circumcision was a seal by which God, 
in his infinite condescension, bound himself 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 89 

to give him the blessings of redemption so 
long as the patriarch exercised faith — to give 
him at death heaven itself should faith be 
found in his heart. And Abraham, on his 
part, bound himself by being circumcised 
to obey and serve God as the God of his 
redemption. 

What was true of Abraham's circumcision 
was true of Isaac's. Isaac, of course, under- 
stood the nature and design of the circum- 
cision which he had received in his infancy 
— that in case he exercised faith it was a seal 
to him also of spiritual blessings. And in 
every case during the whole of the old dis- 
pensation in which the rite was administer- 
ed it meant precisely what it meant in Abra- 
ham's and Isaac's case. Down to the very 
crucifixion of Christ, when the veil was rent, 
no one was ever circumcised without the sac- 
rament having the same significance it had 
at first. Circumcision was a seal of spiritual 
blessings ; it was a badge of church member- 
ship. To be circumcised was to be a mem- 
ber of the visible Church. 

Now, God commanded his people to cir- 
cumcise their infants ; therefore God com- 
manded his people to recognize their infants 



90 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

as church members; to regard and treat them 
as such ; to give them the privileges which 
of right belong to all who are members of 
the visible Church. But the Church was 
the same under the old dispensation that it 
is under the new ; therefore it is the will of 
God that the infants of believers, under the 
new dispensation also, should be recognized 
and treated as Church members. 

Here the argument would be ended were 
it not that there are some who boldly deny- 
that circumcision was a seal of spiritual bless- 
ings. They see that if they admit this they 
will be obliged to admit that infants were 
regarded and treated as members of the 
Church under the old economy, considered as 
a spiritual society, since men might as well 
insist that no such book as the Bible exists 
as refuse to acknowledge that by God's com- 
mand the infants of parents who descended 
from Abraham, and likewise the infants of 
those who joined themselves to the people of 
the God of Israel, were circumcised. They, 
therefore, stoutly deny that circumcision was 
a badge of membership in a spiritual society 
and a seal of the righteousness of Christ by 
which men are justified. 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 91 

Our position, then, will be established (the 
Church membership of infants under the old 
dispensation), if we prove that circumcision 
was a seal of the covenant which promised 
spiritual blessings. This, therefore, we pro- 
ceed to prove, premising that what we hold 
is not that the membership of infants was 
constituted by their circumcision, but that 
their circumcision recognized their birth- 
right membership as those who sustained a 
filial relation to parents who professed the 
true religion. 

1. Our first argument to prove that cir- 
cumcision was a seal of the covenant which 
promised spiritual blessings, is that the Abra- 
hamic covenant was not distinct from the 
covenant of grace, but was the same thing 
with it. Circumcision, then, inasmuch as it 
was the seal of the Abrahamic covenant, was 
the seal of the covenant of grace. 

To this, however, some reply that, while 
circumcision was the seal of the Abrahamic 
covenant viewed in its national aspect, it was 
not the seal of the entire Abrahamic cove- 
nant; it was not the seal of the Abrahamic 
covenant vieived as referring to Christ All 
that a person professed (say these opposers) 



92 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

when he was circumcised was that he era- 
braced the covenant in its national aspect, 
and circumcision only secured his interest 
in the national promises. And viewed as 
a badge or mark, it was only the mark of 
the nationality of Abraham's descendants, 
and was not intended to mark them as of 
the number of God's professing people. 

Thus do these opposers entirely separate 
the national from the. spiritual aspect of the 
Abrahamic covenant. 

But the sophistry of this reasoning will 
be apparent when we look at the case of 
Ishmael. Circumcision did not secure his 
interest in the national promises, for by 
God's express appointment he had no in- 
terest whatever in the promise of the land 
of Canaan. In his case, certainly, circum- 
cision was a seal of the covenant in its spir- 
itual aspect. " When the father of the faith- 
ful received the great promise of redemption 
and bound himself to take Jehovah to be his 
God, he made this profession and engagement 
for Ishmael as well as for himself. Isaac 
made the same profession and covenant for 
Esau as he did for Jacob. Ishmael and 
Esau were as much bound to take Jehovah 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 93 

to be their God and to look for salvation 
through the promised seed as were Isaac and 
Jacob." 

Thus the spiritual element might be pro- 
fessedly embraced by those who had no part 
in the temporal blessings of Abraham. A 
man might be circumcised with reference 
to the spiritual covenant exclusive of the 
national, but none could be circumcised with 
reference to the national covenant exclusive 
of the spiritual. Xone could enroll them- 
selves among the children of Abraham and 
claim as his descendants a part of the nation- 
al inheritance without at the same time en- 
tering into covenant with God with reference 
to spiritual blessings. " By the very act of 
circumcision he took God to be his God and 
promised to be one of his people — i. e., to 
believe what God had taught, trust in what 
he had promised and do what he had com- 
manded. A Jew who did not thus profess 
allegiance to God, who renounced all interest 
in the promise of the Messiah, was an impos- 
sibility. By being a Jew he professed the 
whole Jewish faith and promised fidelity 
to the whole religion of the Hebrews. No 
child was ever presented by his parent for 



94 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

circumcision in whose behalf a profession of 
faith in the true religion and fidelity to the 
true God were not thereby made." 

Our argument, then, remains untouched 
that circumcision, by being the seal of the 
Abrahamic covenant, was the seal of the 
covenant of grace. Whether, therefore, it 
was administered to infants or to adults, it 
was that by w 7 hich the recipient bound him- 
self to serve, trust and obey the God of re- 
demption, and by which God, in infinite con- 
descension, bound himself to bless the re- 
cipient with all spiritual blessings on con- 
dition of faith. He who received circum- 
cision, therefore, was in the visible Church, 
and yet infants were circumcised. 

2. We have before us for consideration the 
covenant which God made with the members 
of the Jewish Church, with its promises, and 
w^e see that the sign of circumcision was 
attached to it. The question is, What kind 
of benefits did that covenant, to which cir- 
cumcision was attached, promise? The ques- 
tion will be answered when we learn what 
was symbolized by its sign. If the sign of 
the Abrahamic covenant symbolized regen- 
eration — inward purification — then the cov- 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 95 

en ant itself (viewed in that aspect in which 
it is admitted that it included infants) prom- 
ised regeneration — inward purification — L e. y 
was the covenant of grace. 

Now, that circumcision was the sign of 
regeneration the following passages, which 
speak of it as the symbol of the circum- 
cision of the heart, the symbol of the re- 
moval of the defilement of our nature, etc., 
plainly show : " In whom also ye are cir- 
cumcised with the circumcision made with- 
out hands in putting off the body of the sins 
of the flesh." Col. ii. 11. "I will circum- 
cise your heart and the heart of your chil- 
dren to love the Lord thy God." Deut. xxx. 
6. " The Lord had a delight in thy fathers 
to love them, and he chose their seed after 
them, even you, above all people, as it is this 
day. Circumcise, therefore, the foreskin of 
your heart." Deut. x. 15, 16; see also Jer. 
iv. 14. An uncircumcised heart, therefore, 
is a heart spiritually corrupt and unclean. 
Lev. xxvi. 41 ; Jer. ix. 26 ; Acts vii. 51. In 
Rom. ii. 29 the apostle says that the true cir- 
cumcision was that which the outward cere- 
mony signified. It is that which is inward, 
of the heart, by the Holy Spirit. This ex- 



96 THESE LITTLE OXES. 

plains Phil. iii. 3 : " We are the circumcis- 
ion which worship God in the Spirit, and 
rejoice in Christ Jesus," etc. Thus circum- 
cision had a spiritual import. It signified 
inward purification. As the baptism of the 
Spi?*it is symbolized by the baptism with 
water, so the circumcision of the heart (in- 
ward purification, cleansing from sin) was 
symbolized by the circumcision of the flesh. 
Circumcision, therefore, being the symbol of 
regeneration, the covenant of which it was 
the badge was the covenant of grace. That, 
therefore, which was the badge of the cove- 
nant of grace (which covenant God in a vis- 
ible manner made with his people) — in other 
words, that which was a badge of Church 
membership — was applied to infants. 

3. The ground taken, that circumcision was 
not the sign of any spiritual covenant, but 
that it w r as the sign exclusively of the nation- 
al covenant which God made with the He- 
brews, is totally irreconcilable with the fact 
that the people were not formed into a nation 
until hundreds of years after circumcision was 
enjoined. It by no means had its origin and 
commencement when their code of laws was 
given them on Mount Sinai. It was to the 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 97 

covenant which God made with Abraham, 
whom the Jews called their father, that the 
sign of circumcision was attached — the cov- 
enant w^hich spake of redemption through 
Christ, 

4. The apostle, in Rom. iv. 11, expressly 
asserts that circumcision was the seal of the 
covenant which promised salvation on con- 
dition of faith — i. e., of the covenant of 
grace. For his words in that passage are, 
" Abraham received the sign of circumcision, 
a seal of the righteousness of the faith which 
he had, being yet uncircumcised." The at- 
tempt has indeed been made to get over this 
by this evasion — namely, that the apostle 
only means that to Abraham circumcision 
was a seal of the righteousness of faith, but 
not to others. This, however, is inconsistent 
with Paul's argument in the context, in which 
he tells the Jews that circumcision was not 
intended to be the ground of justification, but 
to give the assurance of God's favor to all 
those who believe. And yet, although it was 
in this sense a seal — although it was a seal 
and badge of Church membership— -it was 
administered to infants. 

The question has been asked whether the 
7 



98 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

Jews must not have wondered why the seal 
of the covenant was so ordered as to be ad- 
ministered only to males. Probably they 
understood that females were represented in 
the males. They could not have inquired 
why females had no place given them in 
the visible Church, for they knew that they 
had such a place given them. Their po- 
sition as church members by right of birth 
was well understood. In this respect they 
and male children were treated alike. The 
Jews well knew that it was God's will that 
parents should represent their children, ac- 
cording to which principle the parent makes 
the same profession for all his children which 
he makes for himself, so that, if a parent en- 
ters into covenant with God, he covenants 
also for his children. 

We know the Jews' construction of the 
intent and requirement of the law, and that 
all Hebrew children (male and female) were 
incorporated into the Church. Even among 
the Jews of the old dispensation baptism was 
in use. And when a Gentile became a prose- 
lyte, all the fetnales in his family were bap- 
tized, while baptism was superadded to cir- 
cumcision in the case of males. It was thus 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 99 

evident that females were regarded as mem- 
bers of the Church and entitled to the priv- 
ileges of the covenant. 

Since, then, infants were by God's command 
members of the visible Church under the old 
economy, and since the Church was the same 
under the old that it is under the new dis- 
pensation, infants under the new dispensa- 
tion are also church members. 

We, however, repeat what we have already 
said — that in asserting the church member- 
ship of infants we do not assert their regen- 
eration, nor do we absolutely affirm that they 
are entitled to be recognized as church mem- 
bers because they have given evidence that 
they are new creatures which satisfies church 
officers. 

Suppose that in conversing with a friend 
about Mr. B. I tell my friend that Mr. B. 
is a member of the Church. I do not there- 
by affirm that he is regenerated, nor do I 
even affirm that he is one who was received 
into the Church because the church officers 
were satisfied in their minds, upon exam- 
ining him, that he has been regenerated. I 
only say that as Mr. B. intelligently professes 
to have entered into covenant with Christ in 



100 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

the secresy of his soul — in other words, pro- 
fesses that he has faith in Jesus — and that as 
he does this without there being anything in 
his life to contradict his profession, he has a 
right to be regarded and treated as a member 
of the Church, and all are bound to recog- 
nize his right. Nothing more is necessary 
to give an adult a right to be regarded and 
treated as a church member than his making 
a credible profession. It is not necessary 
that we should feel satisfied that he is a re- 
newed man. And in like manner it is not 
necessary that we should feel satisfied in our 
minds that the infants of believers are regen- 
erated before they can have a right to be re- 
garded as church members. Without our 
knowing whether they are actually renewed 
or not, they are members of the visible 
Church when their right to be regarded and 
treated as such is recognized in consequence 
of their filial relation to a parent who is a 
professor of religion. In all cases a parent, 
when he lays hold of the covenant for him- 
self, lays hold of it for his child also; and 
it is to be taken for granted that the child is 
included in the parent's act until the con- 
trary appears — that is, until the child evi- 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 101 

dently intends to refuse to ratify the parent's 
act. 

To assume that infants are savingly in- 
cluded in the covenant embraced by their 
believing parents, is not to assume that they 
are now actually regenerated, but it is to pro- 
ceed on the assumption that they belong to 
the invisible Church,* and that if those who 
have the charge of them are faithful to them 
they will hereafter give both their parents 
and the Church every reason for believing 
that they are the subjects of a work of grace. 

Our doctrine, then, is not that the infants 
of believing parents are members of the 
Church because they are regenerated. Ac- 
tual regeneration is not a sine qua non to 
membership in the visible Church. It is, 
however, to be presumed that the infants of 
God's people are at least of the elect — in 
other words, are the objects of God's eter- 
nal love — and so are in the invisible Church, 
although we do not know that they are; and 
so, of course, it is also to be presumed that 
they will be regenerated by the Holy Spirit, 

* By the invisible Church is meant, be it remembered, 
"the whole number that have been, are or shall be, gath- 
ered into one under Christ, the Head thereof. 55 



102 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

if they are not already. It is because they 
are members of Christ's visible body, in the 
sense which we have now (as we hope) made 
clear, that they are baptized. They are mem- 
bers by birth, and baptism is the badge of an 
already-existing church membership. If they 
are members of Christ's visible body in the 
sense explained, then, although they cannot 
now perform functions or enjoy privileges 
proper only to riper years and intelligent 
piety, yet it will be their duty and privi- 
lege to come to the Lord's table on reach- 
ing years of discretion. 

The preceding argument to prove infant 
church membership (in the sense explained), 
derived from the fact that infants were mem- 
bers of the Church under the old economy, is 
not new. It is old. And yet, though it has 
often been advanced, it has never been an- 
swered. Attempts to answer it have indeed 
been made, but they have never been suc- 
cessful. 

It has been said by some that the law of 
infant church membership has fulfilled its spe- 
cified term of time ; that it has expired by 
limitation; that it ceased to operate when the 
old temporary economy passed away; that, be- 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 103 

longing to the Mosaic ritual law, it was neces- 
sarily abolished when that was abolished. 

But infant church membership did not 
have its origin in the ceremonial law. It 
was established long before Moses, even 
when the visible Church was established — 
that is, when God made his covenant with 
Abraham. Neither the institution nor the 
abrogation of the ceremonial law in the least, 
affected the Abrahamic covenant, and it is in 
that covenant that the charter of the visi- 
ble Church, as an aggregate of families, is 
found. All this we have already shown. 
If infant church membership was never 
made a part of any merely temporary econ- 
omy, it cannot have passed away. The fam- 
ily is still the unit of the Church. 

It is maintained by others that the con- 
ditions of church membership have been so 
changed from what they were before the ad- 
vent that the exclusion of infants from the 
Christian Church is the necessary result. 
Before the advent the conditions of member- 
ship were such that both the regenerate and 
the unregenerate could possess them, whereas, 
since the advent, the conditions can only be 
possessed by the regenerate. Therefore, al- 



104 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

though, under the old economy, the filial re- 
lation to a parent who was a professor of re- 
ligion might easily have been a condition of 
membership, it cannot be such in the Church 
that now is, since no mortal can tell whether 
an infant of a professor is regenerate or not. 

But the assertion that there has been a 
change in the terms of admission into the 
Church is altogether gratuitous. No change 
has ever been revealed. As the terms under 
the old dispensation were a credible profes- 
sion of faith in the true religion ; a promise 
of obedience ; and submission to the appoint- 
ed rite of initiation, so under the new they 
are nothing more than a credible profession of 
faith, the promise of obedience to Christ and 
submission to baptism as the rite of initia- 
tion. In these New Testament times, there- 
fore, as was the case under the former econ- 
omy, both the regenerate and the unregenerate 
may possess the requisite conditions of admis- 
sion into the visible Church. "Every sin- 
cere Israelite really received Jehovah as his 
God and relied upon all his promises, and 
especially upon the promise of redemption 
through the seed of Abraham. He not 
only bound himself to obey the law of God 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 105 

as then revealed, but sincerely endeavored 
to keep all his commandments. Those who 
were Israelites only in name or form, or, as 
the apostle expresses it, were Jews outward- 
ly, made the same professions and engagements, 
but did so only with the lips, and not with 
the heart. If any from among the heathen 
assayed to enter the congregation of the 
Lord, they were received upon the terms 
above specified and to a place equal to (and 
in some cases better than) that of sons and 
daughters. If any Israelite renounced the 
religion of his fathers, he was cut off from 
among the people. All this is true in refer- 
ence to the Church that now is" 

Some there are who insist that Christ gave 
a command no longer to consider the chil- 
dren of believers as members of the Church. 
They admit that he did not do this in express 
terms, but they maintain that such a com- 
mand is implied in the institution by him 
of baptism just before his ascension. They 
maintain that when Christ instituted this 
sacrament, saying, " He that believeth and 
is baptized shall be saved/' he taught that 
under the new dispensation none are to be 
baptized — L e. } be recognized as church mem- 



106 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

bers — except such as are capable of believing. 
He, however, taught no such thing, unless 
he also taught that none are to be saved ex- 
cept such as are capable of believing, for his 
words are just as truly "He that is baptized 
shall be saved " as they are "He that believeth 
shall be saved." The truth is, his words had 
no reference to infants. It is not of them 
that he requires profession of faith in order 
to baptism, but of adults. 

That our Lord did not design to teach us, 
when he instituted baptism, that under the 
new dispensation the law of infant church 
membership is annulled, is also plain from 
the consideration that his words, " He that 
believeth and is baptized shall be saved/ 5 no 
more prove that only adults capable of be- 
lieving are to be baptized, and thus recog- 
nized as church members, than the decla- 
ration of the Abrahamic covenant in Old 
Testament times, "He that believeth and is 
circumcised shall be saved," proves that only 
adults capable of believing were to be cir- 
cumcised. It will not do, therefore, to insist 
that we may properly infer from the words 
of Christ, when he instituted the sacrament 
of baptism, that the law of infant church 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 107 

membership was by him repealed. And as 
no such inference could have been drawn 
from Christ's words by the apostles any more 
than by us, we know what course the apostles 
must have pursued in their labors to build 
up the Church. They had been brought up 
to look upon the infants of those who pro- 
fessed the true religion as church members, 
this having always been the doctrine and 
practice of the whole Jewish Church from 
the time of Abraham. They, moreover, rec- 
ognized it to be the law of God, just as other 
Jews did, that whenever a Gentile was con- 
verted and embraced the true religion, he 
was bound to embrace it for his children as 
well as for himself, they being regarded as 
members of the religious community to which 
the parent joined himself. 

The apostles, being imbued with this idea 
and entertaining no thought suggested by the 
words of Christ of anything different, are 
by him commanded to devote themselves to 
the work of establishing his kingdom, pla- 
cing the badge of church membership upon 
all whom they receive into the Church.. This 
is the command which was given them; and 
now is it supposable, or even conceivable, that 



108 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

they could have interpreted the command in 
any other way than as requiring them to bap- 
tize not only those who professed to be dis- 
ciples, but their children also? The ques- 
tion has been well asked whether, if they 
had been commanded to make disciples by 
circumcising them, they would not have con- 
sidered themselves bound to circumcise the 
children of their converts. "It is plain that 
the apostles could not fail, in receiving pa- 
rents, to receive their children also into the 
Church and to enroll their names in the 
list of disciples. It was inevitable that they 
should act on the principle to which they 
had always been accustomed. When, under 
the Old Testament, a parent joined the con- 
gregation of the Lord, he brought his minor 
children with him. When, therefore, the 
apostles baptized the head of a family, it 
was a matter of course that they should 
baptize his infant children. We accordingly 
find that when God opened the heart of 
Lvdia, she was baptized and her household ; 
when the jailer of Philippi believed, he was 
baptized and all his straightway; and Paul 
says he baptized the household of Stephanas. 
The connection in which these facts are stated 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 109 

renders it plain that the baptism of these fam- 
ilies tvas on the ground of the faith of the 
parent" 

It is no wonder that they pursued this 
course, for they were unacquainted with any 
command of Christ excluding the children 
of believers from membership in the Church. 
And if no such command was given, then, if, 
according to the express will of God, the chil- 
dren of believing parents were included in 
the Church of old, they are included in it 
now. This argument would not be conclu- 
sive were the kingdom of God under the old 
dispensation a different Church from the one 
under the new, but it has been shown that 
the Church under both dispensations is the 
same. 



CHAPTER V. 

OPJECTIONS CONSIDERED. — PARTIAL RE- 
STATEMENT OF THE DOCTRINE. 

1. Most of those who object to the recog- 
nition of the infants of believers as mem- 
bers of the Church found their objection 
on the incompetency of infants to profess 
religion for themselves, and to consecrate 
themselves to the worship and service of 
the Lord Jesus. Bat why is it that no Jew 
of the old dispensation ever thought of en- 
tering his protest against the enrollment of 
children as members of the Church for the 
same reason? The Jewish infant could not 
for himself avouch the Lord to be his God. 
Surely these objectors ought to be greatly as- 
tonished to observe that no Jew ever expressed 
any dissatisfaction because God (when he en- 
tered into covenant with Abraham) promised 
to give blessings or threatened to deny bless- 
ings to the patriarch's unborn descendants, ac- 
110 



THESE LITTLE ONES. Ill 

cord in 2: as such descendants should break or 
keep this covenant. 

It is true that infants are incompetent to 
profess religion for themselves, but they can 
be represented in their parents. God, we 
know, renewed at Sinai the covenant with 
the chosen people, at the same time making 
the law of Moses the law of the covenant 
between him and them. But this covenant 
was not with those of adult age only. On 
the principle that parents represent their 
children, it included their little ones. Ex. 
xix. and xx.; Deut. v. and Deut. xxix. 9-13 : 
"Keep, therefore, the words of this covenant, 
and do them, that ye may prosper in all that 
ye do. Ye stand here this clay, all of you, 
before the Lord your God, your captains of 
tribes, your elders and your officers, with all 
the men of Israel, your little ones, your 
wives, and thy stranger that is within thy 
camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the 
drawer of thy water ; that thou shouldst en- 
ter into covenant with the Lord thy God, 
and into his oath which the Lord thy God 
maketh with thee this day, that he may es- 
tablish thee to-day for a people unto himself, 
and that he may be unto thee a God, as he 



112 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

hath sworn unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to 
Isaac and to Jacob." 

" The fundamental law of this covenant 
was the Decalogue. ' The Lord our God/ 
says Moses, ' made a covenant with us in 
Horeb, . . . saying, I am the Lord thy God, 
which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, 
from the house of bondage. Thou shalt have 
none other gods before me. Thou shalt not 
make thee any graven image/ etc. Deut. v. 
2, 6, 7, 8. The whole people, therefore — the 
adults for themselves, the parents for their 
children, and masters for their servants — 
entered into a solemn covenant with God, 
in which he promised to be their God and 
they promised to be his people ; to have no 
other God but Jehovah ; to make no graven 
image to bow to or worship ; to keep holy 
the Sabbath ; to honor their fathers and 
mothers; to do no murder; not to commit 
adultery ; not to steal ; not to bear false wit- 
ness; and not to covet. In this solemn trans- 
action parents acted for their children, as they 
again were to act for theirs from generation 
to generation. The parent made for the 
child a profession of faith and promise of 
obedience. He introduced his child into 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 113 

the covenant which he himself embraced, 
and circumcision, the seal of that covenant, 
was, therefore, enjoined to be administered 
to children. The principle is here plainly 
recognized that the parent represents the 
child. According to the command of God, 
the parent was not only authorized, but he 
was required, to make a profession of faith 
and promise of obedience in the name of the 
child, and the child, by God's command, was 
regarded as having done what his parent did 
in his behalf, and was accordingly held to the 
contract." 

Not only, however, in the covenant made 
with the chosen people when they were in 
the wilderness, but in all the previous cove- 
nants which God ever formed with men, the 
children were included, as being represented 
in their parents. 

2. An objection urged by others is that 
the New Testament is silent on the subject. 
This objection has perhaps been anticipated 
in the preceding chapter. We admit that the 
New Testament is silent to this extent — that 
it contains no precept directly instituting the 
Church membership of infants; but the rea- 
son is that such a precept was in no ways 



114 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

necessary. Since the relation of children to 
the Church as members had subsisted for cen- 
turies without one moment's interruption, and 
since it was taken for granted that the rela- 
tion was to continue under the new dispen- 
sation , no reason existed why it should be 
instituted anew. " The silence of the New 
Testament on this head is altogether in favor 
of those who maintain that the union of pa- 
rents with the Church of God includes their 
children also. But on the supposition that 
this principle was to operate no longer — that 
the common interest of children with their 
parents in God's covenant was to cease — the 
silence of the New Testament is one of the 
most inexplicable things which ever tortured 
the ingenuity of man. When the economy of 
Moses was to be superseded by that of Jesus 
Christ, he prepared the way in the most grad- 
ual and gentle manner; he showed them from 
their own Scriptures that he had done only 
w T hat he had intended and predicted from the 
beginning; he set before their eyes a compar- 
ative view of the two dispensations to satisfy 
them they had lost nothing, but had gained 
much, by the exchange. But when he touch- 
ed them in the point of most exquisite sensi- 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 115 

bility — when he passed a sword through their 
souls by cutting off their children from all the 
interest which they once had in his Church — 
the heavy mandate is preceded by no warn- 
ing ; is accompanied by no comfort; is fol- 
lowed by nothing to replace the privation ; is 
not even supported by a single reason. It 
cannot be ! 

"Conceding, then, to the opposers of our 
children's claims as members of the Christian 
Church all that they ask with regard to the 
silence of the New Testament, that very con- 
cession works their ruin. If their views are 
correct, it could not have been thus silent. 
The case is now reversed. Instead of our 
producing from the New Testament such a 
warrant for the privileges of our infant seed 
as they require, w T e turn the tables upon 
them, and insist that they shall produce 
scriptural proof of God's having annulled the 
constitution under w r hich we assert our right. 
Till they do this our cause is invincible. He 
once granted to his Church the right for 
which we contend, and nothing but his own 
act can take it away. We want to see the 
act of abrogation. We must see it in the 
New Testament, for there it is if it is at all. 



116 THESE LITTLE OXES. 

Point it out, and we have done. Till then 
we shall rejoice in the consolation of calling 
upon God as our God and the God of our 
seed."* 

3. It is objected by others that great evils 
have resulted from the recognition of the 
right of infants to membership in the Church. 
It is asserted that it has led to the adoption 
of dangerous errors ; as, that the Church 
is essentially only an external society, that 
no personal religious experience is really 
necessary in order to acceptance with God, 
that children are safe if they are only 
baptized and connected with the visible 
Church, etc. 

But these errors have been almost entirely 
confined to those European churches which 
practice the indiscriminate baptism of the 
children of all those who were themselves 
baptized in infancy, whether these latter ever 
became communicants or not, and which, as a 
consequence, baptize the infants of many who 
assume obligations and make promises as pa- 
rents which they have no intention to fulfill, 
and which they are not qualified to fulfill. 
Only let parents and churches faithfully 
* The Church of God, by Dr. J. M. Mason. 



THESE LITTLE OXES. 117 

perform all their duties to the little ones — 
Christ's lambs — and the recognition of the 
church membership of those infants who 
are entitled to be recognized as members, 
would be unaccompanied with the hurtful 
practices to which allusion has been made. 

These evils are not necessary, and they 
never would have afflicted the Church but 
for her own supineness and unfaithfulness. 
It is God's command that we regard and 
treat the children of his people as included 
in the Church ; and his command is to be 
obeyed, whatever our fears may be as to the 
consequences. But were the command al- 
ways obeyed in the right way, were we to 
look upon membership as their birthright, 
and then, instead of neglecting them, watch 
over, and cherish, and train them just as God 
would have us, our recognition of their real 
standing would be rewarded with the hap- 
piest results. 

The evils of which these objectors speak 
they ascribe to a wrong cause. Professors 
of religion are fearfully remiss in the duty 
of watching over, encouraging, praying for, 
admonishing, warning and instructing each 
other with tender solicitude. If they faith- 



118 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

fully performed these duties, those among 
their number who are self-deceived — never 
having been truly born again — would be fa- 
vorably situated for being converted. Many 
unrenewed professors would be savingly ben- 
efited. And did this happy state of things 
exist in the Church (and it ought to exist), 
more of the children of God's people — chil- 
dren born within the Church — would give 
clear evidence of piety, and would grow up 
to be rich blessings to Zion and to the world. 
For they too would enjoy the " watch and 
care" received by adult professors of religion. 
The family is the unit of the Church, and 
its most healthful growth is from within. 
The constant admittance of its maturing chil- 
dren to the Lord's table is its great hope and 
strength. This is not saying that there are 
no other methods by which Christ's kingdom 
increases. One way in which it makes prog- 
ress, is by the conversion and reception into 
the Church, from the world, of small numbers 
from time to time. Another way by which 
it advances is by revivals. Nevertheless, 
children born within the Church constitute a 
most important source from which she is to 
be supplied with communicants. " There is 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 119 

a fund of increase in the very bosom of the 
Church." It is so evidently the will of God 
that his Church should thus grow from with- 
in that in the Confessions of the four great di- 
visions of the Christian Church — the Greek, 
the Latin, the Lutheran, and the Reformed 
— the children of Christians are spoken of 
as fully and really members of the visible 
Church as are their parents. 

God never designed that his kingdom 
should be built up exclusively by revivals. 
It is our privilege to pray for their frequent 
recurrence. Perhaps none could be found 
who would not eagerly give their assent to 
this. But as far as the children of the cove- 
nant are concerned, it would be a great mis- 
take to suppose that God would have us rely 
on revivals at all as the means of their salva- 
tion. They are to be trained up by their pa- 
rents and by the Church as those already be- 
longing to God. "I doubt not to affirm/' 
says that holy and successful minister of 
Christ, Richard Baxter, "that a godly edu- 
cation is God's first and ordinary appointed 
means for the begetting of actual faith and 
other graces. . . . The ordinary appointed 
means for the first actual grace is parents 9 



120 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

godly instruction and education of their chil- 
dren" 

It is partly owing to the undue promi- 
nence given to revivals, and to the too exclu- 
sive dependence on them, that the teachings 
of the Scriptures in regard to careful Chris- 
tian nurture, and the ecclesiastical instruction 
of the young, being a divinely-appointed 
means of building up the Church, have 
been so largely lost sight of. When the Holy 
Spirit converted three thousand souls under 
Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost, 
that apostle did not forget to remind the 
people that the children of those baptized 
were within the covenant. There is no neces- 
sary tendency in revivals to shut this truth 
out of the minds of men, but their preva- 
lence has had this effect. In many cases the 
attention of pastor and people is directed to 
the one object exclusively of bringing on a 
revival. "If they fail, they are chafed. The 
pastor gets discouraged, is disposed to blame 
his people, and the people to blame the pas- 
tor. And all the while the great means of 
good may be entirely neglected. Family 
training of children and pastoral instruction 
of the young are almost entirely lost sight 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 121 

of." Many whose spirits are refreshed and 
gladdened by the occurrence of revivals re- 
joice with sadness. They long for the ar- 
rival of the day when it will be understood 
that whenever parents are brought into the 
Church, whether through revivals or in what- 
ever way, their little ones are also to be 
enrolled as church members according to 
God's ordinance and according to his com- 
mand so clearly revealed in the Bible, and 
when it will be understood that they are not 
only to be recognized as members, but are 
ever after to be watched over, and instructed, 
and nurtured, and trained, as belonging to 
God and as entitled to church privileges 
and discipline. 

Those who long and pray for the frequent 
recurrence of revivals are the very ones to 
feel a deep interest in the Church's having 
right views in regard to infant church mem- 
bership, and in her acting on them. They 
are the very ones to make the greatest exer- 
tions to bring about a correct understanding 
of the scriptural doctrine in regard to such 
membership. For they will thereby be in- 
strumental in procuring from God just such 
revivals as they long for. For our heavenly 



122 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

Father (we cannot doubt it) often withholds 
revivals just because they have a tendency — 
which yet they need not have — to make men 
forgetful of or indifferent to his great ordi- 
nance, so dear to his heart, in respect to the 
Church's children. We may safely believe 
that glorious revivals would be much more 
frequently vouchsafed were they unaccom- 
panied by this sad tendency. 

4. Some may be ready to object that the 
Church is now more alive than she has ever 
been to the necessity of putting forth every 
exertion for the salvation of those who are 
confessedly entirely outside of the Church, 
have no hope, and are without God in the 
world, but that if she makes so much of 
infant church membership the result will be 
that her attention will be drawn off from 
her duty to these, and she will relax her 
efforts in their behalf. 

How, then, did it happen that no such re- 
sult followed from men having the true view 
of the status of baptized children in the days 
of the apostles, and of the primitive Chris- 
tians, and of the Reformers? These all re- 
garded the children of Christians as within 
the Church, and they treated them accord- 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 123 

ingly, and yet their labors to win souls to 

Christ were in no degree injuriously influ- 
enced by this treatment of the Church's chil- 
dren. The labors of the apostles for the 
world lying in wickedness are known to all 
readers of the Xew Testament. So are the 
labors of the first Christians known to all 
who are familiar with the early history of 
the Church. And the Reformers were in- 
cessant in their toils. They strove to gather 
into the fold the young and the ignorant who 
had no part in the Lord. They wrote inces- 
santly for the masses, and taught them and 
preached in every place open to them. 

The tendency of the scriptural view and 
treatment of baptized children is to make 
good men even more faithful to perishing 
outsiders than they are who regard the chil- 
dren of Christians as in no degree different 
in their position from those of unbelievers. 
It must be so. He who regards not the in- 
dividual, but the family, as the unit of the 
Church must necessarily derive from such a 
view great encouragement to toil among the 
masses for the Church's enlargement. Be- 
sides all this, is it right to dishonor any 
ordinance or institution which God has ap- 



124 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

pointed lest injurious consequences may fol- 
low? Whether one is the pastor of a church, 
or an elder, or the superintendent of a Sab- 
bath-school, or a Sabbath-school teacher, he 
labors in the wrong way if his course of in- 
struction does not sustain a proper discrim- 
ination between the children of the covenant 
and others. Such children are no better than 
others; nevertheless, God has made special 
promises with reference to them, and he re- 
quires us to recognize their true relation to 
the Church. . Our part is to obey our bless- 
ed Lord, even if w r e are unable to see what 
good is to result. 

But it may be said that in performing 
Sabbath-school labors, no discrimination is 
possible. This w r e deny. The teacher can 
and should adapt his labors to the position 
of the members of his class. If he has chil- 
dren in his class whose parents are godless, 
he should seek to take the place of such 
parents. " He should be now a father, now 
a mother, in Christ to them. By frequent 
visitations at their houses, by taking them 
one by one to his own house and praying 
with them, counseling and instructing them, 
by providing them with suitable Christian 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 125 

reading, by writing letters to them, by a holy 
and happy example and all this from year to 
yean. — he should supply to the Holy Spirit 
and to them the means of sanctification." If 

others in his class are blessed with God- 
fearing parents, he can often remind them 
of their peculiar privileges and responsibili- 
ties as children of the covenant. This would 
not interfere with the duties of the parents 
of this latter class of children, provided they 
were really anxious to be faithful parents. 
It is true enough that many professing pa- 
rents (alas! does not the remark apply, to 
some extent, to the Church itself?) altogether 
misapprehend the real work and mission of 
the Sabbath-school. In many cases, at least, 
the instruction of the household is left chief- 
ly to the Sabbath-school teacher. 

It may be said that even should the entire 
Church in all its denominations be brought 
to consider the position of baptized chil- 
dren to be just what we contend that it is, 
and to treat them as church members, she 
would soon slide back to her present atti- 
tude of mind in regard to the subject, and 
cease to teach and train them as being al- 
ready within the Church. She would not 



126 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

persevere, for her work would impose too 
heavy burdens and labors upon her. We 
reply that God could easily preserve her 
from this unfaithfulness, and would do so 
in answer to importunate prayer. We ad- 
mit, however, that it requires far more pa- 
tience to continue year after year in daily 
labors for the children than it does to work 
for revivals. We trust the time is not dis- 
tant when certain men will be unable to say 
what, with some truth, they say now : " You 
cannot deny that you profess to regard these 
children as church members. But you do 
not believe that they really are. You never 
treat them as church members. You give 
them none of the privileges of church mem- 
bers. You do not count them on your list 
of church members. They do not regard 
themselves as church members. They are 
practically as separate from the church as 
the children of the infidel or the Hottentot." 
The visible Church, then, consists in part 
of children whose parents are believers. We 
will close the present chapter by very briefly 
pointing out two points of resemblance be- 
tween the membership of infants and that 
of those who only became church members 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 127 

after reaching maturity, and also one or two 
points of dissimilarity between the two cases. 
This will involve a partial restatement of the 
doctrine which we have been endeavoring to 
prove. 

1. As to the Condition of Admission into the 
Church. — As the Church must receive adults 
who make a credible profession about whose 
regeneration it is uncertain, so it must rec- 
ognize as members the children of believ- 
ers, even though it knows not w r hether they 
are renewed or unrenewed. Here is a point 
of resemblance. The difference between the 
two cases is that the adults do not become 
members until they make a profession of 
personal faith, .whereas the infants of be- 
lievers are members without a profession 
made in their own persons. 

It is just as it was under the old dispen- 
sation. A Gentile wdio declared himself a 
convert was not received into the Jewish 
Church until he himself openly professed 
his faith, but after his admittance his chil- 
dren were within the Church as soon as they 
were born, and so their reception into it was 
not conditioned on their making a profession 
in their own persons. "As a credible pro- 



128 THESE LITTLE OXES. 

fession of faith by adults raises the belief at 
the bar of human judgment that they are 
members of the invisible Church, are of 
the elect, are of the redeemed, so the birth 
of the children of believers is to be accepted 
as the ground for the belief that they also 
belong to that number, and they should be 
regarded and treated accordingly until their 
own deliberate and persistent conduct de- 
stroys the belief." 

Negatively, then, the condition of mem- 
bership in the case of adults and in the 
case of children is the same. It is not ac- 
tual regeneration. Positively, it is different 
in the two cases, since in the case of adults 
it is a profession of personal faith, while, as 
far as infants are concerned, it is the filial 
relation to a parent who is a professor. 

Still, although the children of Christians 
are born members of the visible Church and 
remain members until they deliberately cast 
themselves out, yet even in their case a per- 
sonal profession (whereby they accept of the 
act of their parents when their parents made 
a profession in their behalf) is necessary be- 
fore they can be qualified to partake of 
the Lord's Supper. They would generally, 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 129 

upon reaching the years of discretion, pos- 
sess the qualifications for coming to com- 
munion, would their parents and the Church 
only discharge their whole duty to them from 
their birth. But this act of coming to com- 
munion and making a profession of personal 
faith, is not in their case an act of joining the 
Church, since previously to its performance 
their membership is direct and absolute. 

2. As to the Nature of Church Member- 
ship. — It is in both cases precisely the same. 
The essential sameness of the visible church 
membership of infants with that of adults, 
will appear, when we consider that in both 
cases membership is founded on presumptive 
membership in the invisible Church — that is, 
in both cases the right exists of being regard- 
ed and treated by men as belonging to the 
invisible Church. To regard and treat either 
adults or children in this manner is simply 
to assume in our minds that they are within 
the covenant, and to treat them as within it. 
It is, therefore, to do just what the pious 
Jews of the old dispensation did, who took 
it for granted that professors and their chil- 
dren were both included in the promises made 
to the fathers. 



130 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

"The church relation into which the chil- 
dren are introduced, is the same as that 
which is assumed on a profession of faith 
by adults. It entitles them, first and at 
once, to public recognition as members of 
the church by the administration of bap- 
tism, the badge of that relationship, and 
then to every right or privilege as soon as 
they exhibit the requisite qualifications for 
it. And it imposes upon them every duty 
which is assumed by a profession of faith. 
Their membership is as direct and absolute, 
though not as full, as that of the adult pro- 
fessor. They belong to the particular con- 
gregation in which their parents are enrolled. 
Hence a list of the baptized members, as well 
as of the communicating members, should be 
kept by each session, and should be reported 
from year to year. When parents remove 
from one charge to another, and are dis- 
missed and recommended as members, their 
children should also receive their appropri- 
ate certificates. They have a divinely-estab- 
lished claim on the care and consideration 
of the particular church in which their lot 
is cast." 

It follows, from the church membership 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 131 

of the children of believers being exactly 
the same as that of adults, that the church 
cannot dissolve it for any other cause than 
would justify her in dissolving the church 
membership of an adult member. 

" As nothing but the outspoken denial of 
his profession, or a persistent and flagrant 
course of transgression which points to total 
apostasy, should lead to the excommunication 
of a professor, nothing but the deliberate 
cutting off of themselves can place any of 
the children of the Church out of its prov- 
ince during their life. 

" They are under its government and dis- 
cipline from the beginning to the end. In 
their earlier years this must be exercised 
mainly, though not exclusively, through their 
parents — not exclusively, for the Church has 
its direct as well as indirect bearing on them. 
The object of this government and discipline 
is to prevent transgression, by nurture, and 
to correct transgression, by necessary cen- 
sures. Baptized members have no right to 
come to communion until they make a pro- 
fession of personal faith. Until they do this 
they are like citizens under age, with their 
rights held in suspension as a just punish- 



132 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

merit for their refusal to believe. These sus- 
pended rights are those of communing and 
having their children baptized." (Dr. A. A. 
Hodge, Commentary on the Confession of Faith, 
p. 475.) 



CHAPTEE VI. 

THE PROMISE OF OUR COVENANT-KEEPING 
GOD TO BLESS AND SAVE THE CHILDREN 
OF HIS PEOPLE. 

In the preceding chapters we have en- 
deavored to prove that when men publicly 
enter into covenant with Christ, and there- 
by profess religion, they covenant likewise 
for their children, who thus become mem- 
bers of the visible Church along with their 
parents. In this chapter we hope to show 
clearly, that in the promise which our Lord, 
as the other party to the covenant, makes 
to professors of his religion he includes their 
little ones also. 

It belongs, however, to the very nature 
of a covenant to have conditions. The con- 
ditions on which the covenant-promise in 
reference to the salvation of children is sus- 
pended, as far as their parents are concerned, 
are that their parents shall be real believers 
and not such merely by profession, and that 

133 



134 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

they train up their children in the nurture 
and admonition of the Lord, at the same 
time exercising faith in the promise that 
they shall then be saved. 

It ought not to pain or discourage us to 
learn that these conditions are laid down. 
When I hear that such a delightful doctrine 
as this is taught in the Scriptures, I ought 
not to be disappointed when told further 
that the promise is a conditional one — that 
it does not apply to those who fail to use 
the appointed means for the salvation of their 
children. No one whose heart is right in the 
sight of God washes to be saved in any other 
way than in that appointed by God, nor will 
such a one wish his children to be saved in 
any other way. We cannot make our own 
terms. We glorify God when, by fulfilling 
the conditions of the covenant with reference 
to our offspring, we are the means of their 
salvation. 

But are we warranted, because of this 
promise, in being confident that all chil- 
dren will be saved whose believing parents 
are measurably faithful? The reply often 
given to this is, that the promise does not 
secure the salvation, without any exception, 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 135 

of such children, because it belongs to that 
class of promises which are to be regard- 
ed as general declarations of the divine pur- 
poses, and which are not intended to in- 
dicate the issue of any particular case ; that 
the promise has its exceptions, just as the 
declaration has its exceptions that seed-time 
and harvest shall continue while the world 
stands; that, nevertheless, the covenant of 
grace made with believers so includes their 
offspring that its promise is an abundant 
security that as a general rule the children 
of Christians will receive grace and salva- 
tion on the ground of the faith of their 
parents. Though this view, which is our 
own, admits that we may sometimes behold 
exceptions, yet it is foil of encouragement 
and comfort to all believing fathers and 
mothers. For according to it, if we de- 
voutly train up our children for God, then 
we may at least as confidently expect their 
salvation, as the husbandman the harvest. 

GOD IS ABLE TO PROMISE THIS. 

Many, in consequence of certain unscrip- 
tural views which they have adopted, are 
unable to believe that faith in covenant- 



136 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

promises has anything to do with the sal- 
vation of children. They must, if consist- 
ent, hold it to be impossible for God to 
promise parents that he will renew their 
children, since, according to their view, the 
regeneration of men is not God's work; it 
is man's work. Every sinner has plenary 
power to change his own heart, and there- 
fore to look to God to effect this change is 
a great mistake. According to these views, 
there is no place for a covenant-promise 
touching this matter; and if God has made 
such a promise, the parent cannot rely on 
it. For it is the sinner, and he alone, who 
can do the work. 

There are others who are willing to ac- 
knowledge that it partly belongs to the Holy 
Spirit to regenerate the soul, but who deny 
that this change is his work exclusively. 
They maintain that the soul must co-operate 
with the Holy Spirit in effecting the great 
change. They admit that our nature is mor- 
ally deteriorated to some extent, but the to- 
tal spiritual death of the soul they by no 
means admit, and therefore they deny the 
entire inability of the natural man to that 
which is spiritually good. 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 137 

According to the views of these persons, 
also, it would be impossible for God to prom- 
ise us the regeneration and salvation of our 
children ; and anything like a connection be- 
tween the piety of parents and that of their 
children is out of the question, because such 
a connection implies that the regeneration of 
a soul may be effected by causes independent 
of and prior to the decision of the soul's 
own will. To hope for and expect the re- 
generation of our children simply because 
God has promised it to as supposes that noth- 
ing short of a divine supernatural energy, 
unattended by the souPs own co-operation, 
can make the soul morally good. 

Dr. Bushnell's book on Christian nurture 
discusses with great power the organic life 
of the family, the connection between the 
faith of the parent and that of the child, 
and the importance of Christian nurture as 
the means of building up the Church ; and 
we expect to advert again to the teachings 
of his book,* on some accounts so valu- 
able. We would only remark here that he 
also holds errors in regard to the state of 

* Christian Nurture, by Horace Bushnell. New York, 
1871. 



138 THESE LITTLE OXES. 

human nature which involve a denial that 
parents are in any need of covenant promises 
with reference to their children's salvation. 
Instead of recognizing the scriptural truth 
that the Holy Spirit regenerates the soul 
by operating upon it in a supernatural way, 
he attributes to the parental character and 
nurture as an organic power an influence 
fully adequate to the child's regeneration. 
It is not on God's covenant promise, there- 
fore, according to him, that we are to rest 
our expectations touching the conversion 
and salvation of our offspring. 

If the new creation of the soul is not 
solely and exclusively the work of God — 
if it is partly man's work — how could God 
ever promise you that he will renew your 
children? How could he ever enter into a 
covenant with his people to save their little 
ones? And what meaning would there be 
in talking about our having faith in a cov- 
enant promise? You must confide in the 
declarations of Scripture concerning the state 
of human nature. If you are in error as to 
the total depravity of the soul and its con- 
sequent entire inability to originate spiritual 
life in itself, you will fail to see that God 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 139 

has every human spirit entirely in his own 
hands, to regenerate it or not as he wills; 
and failing to see this, you cannot rely on 
God's promise to save your children. 

While the Bible does not affirm that all 
men are equally wicked, or that any man is 
as thoroughly corrupt as it is possible for 
one to be, or that men are not in a greater 
or less degree honest in their dealings w r ith 
each other and kind in their feelings toward 
each other, it does teach that the apostasy of 
all men from God is total or complete — that 
each man is, until God changes his heart, en- 
tirely destitute of holiness, of any principle 
of spiritual life. Though this is not our 
normal and original condition, since Adam 
was created holy, yet now it is the state of 
all men at birth. We are a fallen race. 
We are by nature the children of wrath, 
and we come into this world in a state of 
spiritual death. From this state we can do 
nothing to deliver ourselves. In God alone 
is our help, and it is only when we fully be- 
lieve this that we can trust in God's promise 
to deliver and save our children. 

Your children, then, are by nature under 
condemnation and totally destitute of spirit- 



140 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

ual life. But provided you yourself have 
faith and may rightfully look upon yourself 
as belonging to Christ, you may fully expect 
that the Holy Spirit will work faith also 
in your children, if you carefully bring them 
up for God, and unite them to the Saviour. 
Faithfully use the means which God has 
commanded you to use, and then, if you 
would not be guilty of doubting the prom- 
ise of the covenant, confidently expect that 
a saving work will be begun in their souls 
and carried on to its completion. 

What we are intent upon is not simply 
to advocate the doctrine that pious parents 
who are faithful may be expected to have 
pious children, but to hold up the precious 
truth that the salvation of their offspring is 
a thing of peomise — that in the covenant 
which God enters into with the believing 
parent the promise of eternal life is for his 
child as much as for himself. 

In professing Christ before men and be- 
coming a member of the visible Church, you 
by your own act covenanted for your child 
as well as for yourself. And God, on the 
other hand, covenanted and promised to bless 
your child. We repeat it that, provided God's 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 141 

people do their part and use the appointed 
means, the salvation of their children is a 
thing of promise, and the promise is that 
on which they should rely. 

THE PRINCIPAL PASSAGES WHICH CONTAIN 
THE PROMISES. 

But what are the precise words in which 
the promise to save our children is given? 
Where are the words of the promise to be 
found ? They are to be found in many parts 
of the Bible, but it is sufficient to refer to 
the following passages. In the covenant 
made w T ith Abraham, God said (Gen. xvii. 7), 
/ will establish my covenant between me and 
thee, and thy seed after thee in their genera- 
tions, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God 
to thee and thy seed after thee. Every He- 
brew understood this to be a promise to bless 
and save not only himself, but his children ; 
and indeed it is sufficiently plain. It is, 
however, repeated on various occasions in 
the most explicit terms. Thus in Deut. 
xxxix. 6 it is said, The Lord thy God will 
circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy 
seed to love the Lord thy God with all thine 
heart and with all thy soul, that thou mayest 



142 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

live. The mercy of the Lord, says the Psalm- 
ist (ciii. 17, 18), is from everlasting to everlast- 
ing upon them that fear him, and his right- 
eousness unto children' s children; to such as 
keep his covenant, and to those that remember 
his commandments to do them. It is striking 
that God describes himself as a covenant- 
keeping God, and proclaims that generation 
after generation of those that fear him shall 
have evidence of his fidelity. Thus (Deut. 
vii. 9), Knoio therefore thcd the Lord thy God 
he is God, the faithful God, which Iceepeth cov- 
enant and mercy ivith them thcd love him and 
keep his commandments to a thousand genera- 
tions. What could be more explicit than the 
words of the prophet Isaiah (lix. 21)? — As 
for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the 
Lord; My Spirit thcd is upon thee, and my 
words which J have put in thy mouth, shall 
not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the 
mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy 
seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth 
and for ever. What a blessing to be con- 
nected with those who are in covenant with 
God ! The promise is, To thee and thy seed 
after thee. When the apostle Peter uttered 
these words (Acts ii. 39), he only announced 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 143 

a truth with which his hearers were all famil- 
iar. Nothing could be plainer than these dec- 
larations of the Bible. They cannot be mis- 
understood. You have, believer, the promise 
that if you bring up your children for God 
he will give them his Spirit, renew their 
hearts, and save them for ever. 

THE PROMISE IS ALSO IMPLIED EN THE 
COMMANDS WHICH GOD LAYS UPON PA- 
RENTS. 

We have shown in the former part of this 
little book that God commands not only the 
Church in general, but parents, to give their 
children a place in the visible Church — 
i. e., to recognize their right to such a place. 
But in commanding this external relation- 
ship, God virtually promises that higher spir- 
itual relationship which alone gives value to 
the external relationship. 

God commands the baptism of the chil- 
dren of believing parents. But what is bap- 
tism ? By the admission of all, it is the sign 
and seal of the covenant of grace. What, 
then, does its being attached to infants prove? 
It proves that they are within the covenant, 
that they are the subjects of its promises, 



144 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

that for them the promise of the Holy Spirit 
and of every blessing included in eternal life 
are meant. 

HOW CAN THE LACK OF INTEREST IN THIS 
PRECIOUS PROMISE BE EXPLAINED? 

The explanation of the manifest want of 
heart-interest in these precious assurances of 
God on the part of not a few professedly 
Christian parents, is that they are themselves 
still unrenewed. Though unrenewed men 
who have been born in a Christian commu- 
nity, and have been taught from infancy to 
revere the Bible, may readily admit that it 
is a divine revelation, and may assent to its 
claims without reluctance, nevertheless they 
are and must be indifferent to "the things 
of the Spirit." Divine things have no at- 
traction for them. They do not feel their 
power because they are unable to see their 
glory and sweetness and adaptation to the 
wants of sinful, weak, helpless souls. To the 
doctrines, directions, encouragements, warn- 
ings, cautions, exhortations and entreaties of 
the word of God, to its descriptions and 
praises of God's perfections, blessedness, 
works, attributes, love for sinners, and of 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 145 

his infinitely glorious and mysterious plan 
for saving lost sinners, they are utterly and 
totally indifferent. They are indifferent to 
everything that relates to God — to everything 
God has said and has promised. One would 
think that God's loving promises and encour- 
agements, intended for weak, erring mortals 
sensible in some measure of their wants, 
would impress and arouse them. Most un- 
regenerate men are at times in some measure 
sensible of their wants, but to divine things 
they are insensible and indifferent. They 
cannot feel interested in them. Now, God's 
kind promises to his people with reference 
to their children are to be classed among 
the "things of the Spirit" — divine things; 
and this, with the fact that many profess- 
ing parents have never been born again, but 
are still unrenewed, is no doubt the reason 
why many professing parents feel no inter- 
est in such promises and are unaffected by 
them. We need not expect that unconverted 
members of the Church, who have children, 
will be moved and roused to action by God's 
promises to bestow spiritual blessings upon 
children. These, we repeat it, are to be classed 
among "the things of the Spirit," but the 
10 



146 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

natural man receiveth not the things of the 
Spirit. 

But even many parents who are not des- 
titute of piety are to an extent truly won- 
derful indifferent to the promises which God 
makes to believing parents. Could it be so 
if they possessed vigorous piety? May it not 
be the case that as the unregenerate state of 
some parents who are professors accounts for 
their being totally indifferent to all spiritual 
things, and therefore to the promises touch- 
ing children, so the lukewarmness and want 
of spirituality of other parents who are not 
really graceless explain the feebleness with 
which they respond to the directions and 
promises intended for believers who sustain 
the parental relation ? Would not the sim- 
ple increase of the piety of such worldly- 
minded fathers and mothers be sufficient to 
deepen their interest in all that God says to 
Christian parents with reference to their off- 
spring? 

But there is another explanation of this 
lack of interest. Parents, whether pious or 
not, cannot feel an interest in the divine 
promise to bless their children if they do 
not believe that any such promise exists, and 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 147 

they are constrained to disbelieve that such a 
promise exists if they sincerely deny the pos- 
sibility of the church membership of children'. 
Let us suppose that I, a parent, profess relig- 
ion and enter into covenant with God for my- 
self, promising faith and obedience to Christ. 
Now, if I deny that my children are by 
this act of mine introduced into the visi- 
ble Church, then I deny that I am the rep- 
resentative of my little ones. I deny that it 
is my duty to make promises in their behalf 
binding them to exercise faith and yield 
obedience upon their becoming independent 
moral agents, and I deny that they begin 
to sustain a covenant relation to God based 
on my own faith and spiritual life. But it 
is utterly impossible to deny and disbelieve 
all this, and at the same time believe that God 
specially promises to bless my little ones and 
give them eternal life. And disbelieving the 
existence of such a promise, how can I feel 
an interest in it ? 

In regard to a feeling of interest in this 
class of the divine promises, we must expect 
to see professing parents in this respect what 
their own parents were before them. It may 
be that when those who have now become 



148 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

heads of families were themselves children, 
their own parents paid little heed to those 
Scripture assurances which are so adapted 
to encourage and stimulate Christian fathers 
and mothers. If this was the case, is it sur- 
prising that, now that they sustain the parent- 
al relation, they in their turn show the same 
indifference to these assurances of the cove- 
nant ? They do but follow the bad example 
set before them in their early days. Nothing 
has happened to them during their past lives 
(unless they have since reaching maturity en- 
joyed the blessing of being well instructed 
by a faithful ministry) to arouse their atten- 
tion to the covenant promise w 7 hich includes 
the little ones. These promises, therefore, 
even if read, are not attended to, and per- 
haps it is not known that they are to be 
found in the' Bible at all. 

But though they are so often disregarded, 
even by Christian parents, it cannot be de- 
nied that they are set before us with great 
prominence in the Bible, and it is our duty 
and privilege to plead them ; and in reliance 
upon them we are warranted to expect that 
our children will, through the divine bless- 
ing upon our faithful efforts, grow up the 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 149 

children of God. He is not a well-informed 
Christian who does not know that these gra- 
cious promises of God have been abundantly 
recognized by all branches of the Reformed 
Church, as contained in the Bible. They 
have united in teaching that since infants 
as well as their parents are included in the 
covenant and Church of God, and since re- 
demption from sin by the blood of Christ, 
and the Holy Ghost, is promised to them no 
less than to their parents, they must also be 
admitted into the Christian Church, and be 
distinguished from the children of unbeliev- 
ers, as was done under the old covenant. 

THE WHOLE MEANING OF THE PROMISE. 

The promise of our covenant God is not 
merely that our children shall become Chris- 
tians some time before they die. It is much 
more comforting than that. It is that if we 
precede their birth with strong crying and 
prayer for them, and that if afterward we 
are perse veringly faithful to them in the mat- 
ter of their Christian nurture, they shall grow 
up Christians. Just this is what the promise 
encourages us to expect. Among the many 
passages which contain by implication this 



150 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

gracious promise to parents is this : " Bring 
them up in the nurture and admonition of 
the Lord." Eph. vi. 4. Bushnell justly says 
that this form of expression indicates the ex- 
istence of a divine nurture encompassing the 
child and moulding him unto God, so that 
he shall be brought up, as it were, in him. 
Certainly, God's promise means something 
more than that the children of his people 
are to grow up for future conversion. 

One of BushnelPs propositions is that, ac- 
cording to God's plan, the child is to grow up 
a Christian and never know himself as being 
otherwise. He does not err in maintaining 
that this doctrine, so far from being a nov- 
elty, is as old as the Christian Church. But 
he is faulty in that he makes no attempt to 
show that the reason, and the sole reason, 
why this precious doctrine is to be received, 
is that God has promised that the children of 
faithful parents shall grow up in piety. He 
makes little of God's promise to parents. 
And no wonder; for it is the doctrine of his 
book that as the parent plant transmits its 
life to the seed by organic natural law, so 
by a similar process the spiritual life of the 
pious parent flows to his offspring. It is 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 151 

not the teaching of his book, however, that 
this alone is sufficient, for he admits, and 
even insists, that to the power of the life 
of the parent there must be added the power 
of Christian nurture; indeed, the necessity of 
such nurture is set forth throughout his whole 
book with great ability and eloquence. Then, 
when Christian nurture is all that it should 
be, we may confidently expect the steady 
growth of the child in holiness and Chris- 
tian loveliness. Thus, notwithstanding his as- 
sertions to the contrary, he seems to exclude 
an influence of the Holy Spirit which is prop- 
erly supernatural. And he also fails to rest 
the connection between the piety of parents 
and that of their offspring on God's covenant 
promise — a promise conditioned, of course, 
on the use, on the part of the parent, of the 
divinely-appointed means. 

But, as already intimated, he has a solid 
scriptural basis for his position that we ought 
to expect the children of God's people, pro- 
vided they are brought up in the nurture of 
the Lord, to grow up Christians without their 
ever being able to remember w r hen they first 
began to love God. 

"God," he says, "does expressly lay it 



152 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

upon us to expect that our children will 
grow up in piety under the parental nurture, 
and assumes the possibility that such a result 
may ordinarily be realized. According to all 
that he has taught us concerning his own dis- 
positions, he desires on his part that children 
should grow up in piety as earnestly as the 
parent can desire it — nay, as much more earn- 
estly as he hates sin more intensely. 

"AH Christian parents would like to see 
their children grow up in piety; and the bet- 
ter Christians they are, the more earnestly 
they desire it. But why should a Christian 
parent, the deeper his piety, be led to desire 
more earnestly what is impossible? And if 
it be generally seen that the children of such 
persons are more likely to become Christians 
early, what forbids the hope that if they were 
riper still in their piety, living a more Christ- 
like life and more cultivated in their views 
of family nurture, they might see their chil- 
dren grow up always in piety toward God? 
Moreover, since it is the distinction of Chris- 
tian parents that they are themselves in the 
nurture of the Lord, since Christ and the di- 
vine love are become the food of their life, 
what will they so naturally seek as to have 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 153 

their children partakers with them — heirs to- 
gether with them in the grace of life? 

" What authority have you from Scripture 
to tell your child or by any sign to show him 
that you do not expect him truly to love and 
obey God till after he has spent whole years 
in hatred and wrong? Perhaps you do not 
give him to expect that he is to grow up in 
sin ; you only expect that he will yourself. 
That is scarcely better, for that which is your 
expectation will assuredly be his. 

" This doctrine is not a novelty now rash- 
ly and for the first time propounded. I will 
show you before I have done that it is as old 
as the Christian Church. Neither let your 
own experience raise a prejudice against it. 
If you have endeavored to realize the very 
truth I here affirm, but find that your chil- 
dren do not exhibit the character you have 
looked for, you are not to conclude that the 
doctrine I here maintain is, of course, untrue 
or impracticable. . . . Have you nothing to 
blame in yourselves — no lack of faithful ness, 
no mistake of duty which with a better 
and more cultivated piety you would have 
been able to avoid? Have you been so 
nearly even with your privilege and duty 



154 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

that you can find no relief but to comfort 
yourselves in the conviction that God has 
appointed the failure you deplore? When 
God marks out a plan of parental nurture, 
you will see at once that he could not base 
it on a want of piety in you or on any im- 
perfection of manner flowing from defect- 
ive piety. Then, again, has there been no 
fault of piety in your church, no carnal 
spirit visible to your children and impart- 
ing its noxious and poisonous quality to the 
Christian atmosphere in which they have had 
their nurture? For it is not for you alone 
to realize all that is included in the idea 
of Christian education. It belongs to the 
Church of God to bear a part of the respon- 
sibility with you." 

That God's promise to convert the chil- 
dren of believing parents who are faithful, 
is a promise to renew them at an early age 
is (in addition to what has been said) ren- 
dered more than probable by the following 
considerations. 

Our heavenly Father knows that when 
a soul is brought home at the beginning of 
life's journey it escapes a thousand snares 
which would otherwise endanger its salva- 



THESE LITTLE OXES. 155 

tion, and which have caused the destruction 
of multitudes. Evil companions, corrupting 
books, and ruinous errors which are always 
afloat, give the adversary immense advan- 
tage, and are used by him w 7 ith dreadful ef- 
fect. Multitudes fall victims to evil habits 
in which they never would have indulged 
had they been the subjects of grace in child- 
hood. Moreover, unless good habits are cul- 
tivated very early, it is exceedingly difficult 
to become fixed in them. All experience 
shows that the older a person is, the harder 
it is to forsake old ways and enter upon new 
ones ; and unless habits of daily and system- 
atic secret prayer, resolute conflict with sin in 
its various forms, liberality to the cause of 
Christ, watchfulness, and others of a similar 
kind, are formed in the morning of life, it is 
exceedingly doubtful whether they will ever 
become strong, even supposing the effort to 
form them be subsequently made. All this 
our covenant God knows when he cheers our 
hearts by promising to renew and bless our 
children. 

One converted to God in childhood will 
probably before the end of his life make far 
greater attainments in holiness than he would 



156 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

have made had he remained an unconverted 
person until a later period. For while it is 
true that sanctification can be promoted in no 
other way than by union to Christ, by which 
we become partakers of his Holy Spirit, yet 
it is not to be forgotten that the Christian 
graces will never grow unless they are ex- 
ercised, and that they become stronger the 
more they are exercised. How much great- 
er advantages, then, than others do they pos- 
sess for attaining to great excellence who 
begin in childhood to practice the graces of 
faith and humility and love to God and 
man ! 

There is, moreover, an intimate connec- 
tion between knowledge of the truth, and ho- 
liness, so that, other things being equal, they 
who are most familiar with divine truth will 
make the greatest progress in religion. But 
let one become a subject of God's grace in 
the beginning of his days, and then, in con- 
sequence of his thirsting for the sincere milk 
of the word so early in life, he will be likely 
to advance rapidly in his knowledge of the 
word. Surely, if the belief that our children 
shall be made new creatures some time before 
they die is fitted to refresh and comfort our 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 157 

hearts, our souls must be still more glad- 
dened by an expectation (one which it is be- 
lieved the Scriptures encourage us to cherish) 
that they will be renewed while yet young, 
and will grow up Christians. Can it, then, 
be that God, who knows our longings, can 
mean anything less by his promise than their 
early conversion and sanctification? 

Then, again, as we do not forget the truth 
that the early conversion of our children 
would shorten the period of their subjection 
to the dominion of sin, neither is our heav- 
enly Father insensible to it. For children 
are born with a depraved nature, and can 
only be delivered from the dominion of sin 
by the regenerating act of the Holy Spirit. 

The years which are spent unprofitably to 
ourselves are spent unprofitably to others. 
It is not until the kingdom of Christ has 
been set up in our own souls, and we are 
engaged in nourishing the gracious principle 
implanted there, that we are disposed or fit- 
ted to seek the highest welfare of our fellow- 
men. Here, then, is another consideration 
which makes it probable in the highest de- 
gree that the divine promise to regenerate 
and sanctify our offspring is to be interpreted 



158 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

as meaning their early conversion and sano- 
tification. While they are unrenewed their 
influence is only for evil, and until holy 
affections find a home in their hearts they 
neither can, nor will, employ their powers 
in the service of Christ. 

But if any are disposed to think that it 
makes very little difference in regard to one's 
usefulness in subsequent life whether he is 
renewed in childhood or at a later period, it 
will at least be admitted that his becoming 
the subject of gracious influences while very 
young will facilitate his entering upon that 
employment or profession which will be most 
in accordance with the will of God, and 
which will most conduce to his usefulness. 
They only who are governed by religious 
principle have their own usefulness in view 
when they choose that employment in which 
they expect to spend their days. They alone 
seek the direction of God in the matter. If, 
then, our children are thus under the influ- 
ence of love to God and their fellow-men 
while they are very young, they will be al- 
most certain to enter upon those pursuits in 
which they will do the most good, and God 
will bless them and their labors. Should 



THESE LITTLE OKES. 159 

it be his will that they engage in the minis- 
try of reconciliation, they will choose that 
for their life-work. 

Add to this if it is really the plan of God 
that the Church should grow from within in 
the truest sense of the word, it must be his 
will that our offspring should be renewed, 
not late in life, but in childhood. 

Tt is doubtless true, then, as Bushnell says, 
that God lays it upon us to expect that our 
children will grow up in piety under the pa- 
rental nurture, and assumes the possibility 
that such a result may ordinarily be real- 
ized. The child is to grow up a Christian 
and never know himself as being otherwise. 
It is to be remembered, however — and it is 
this which Bushnell loses sight of — that the 
means used by their parents and by the 
church for their spiritual welfare have a re- 
lation to the peculiar position which they 
occupy as children of the covenant. The 
fact, which is so precious, of the connection 
between the faith of parents and the sal- 
vation of their offspring is founded on noth- 
ing else than God's promise. God prom- 
ises his people that he will be a God to 
them and to their seed after them — that his 



160 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

Spirit, which is upon them, will be upon 
their children. 

What is the promise which God made to 
Abraham, and which was subsequently re- 
peated with still greater explicitness to the 
members of the Jewish Church by their 
inspired teachers, Moses, David, Isaiah and 
others, and which Peter again presented to 
his hearers on the day of Pentecost? It is 
this : " I will establish my covenant between 
me and thee, and thy seed after thee in their 
generations, for an everlasting covenant to be 
a God to thee and thy seed after thee." 

Now, it is intended that each Christian 
parent should make use of this promise. 
And as it would involve a contradiction 
to deny that the offspring of believing pa- 
rents are members of the visible Church, 
while admitting that they are within the 
covenant into which their parents enter 
with God, so the covenant-promise holds 
out to them the expectation that their lit- 
tle ones will, if they are faithful, grow up 
in piety. 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 161 



SOME OF THE REASONS WHY SO MANY CHIL- 
DREN OF PROFESSORS OF RELIGION PER- 
ISH. 

We are not to attribute the ruin of those 
who perish, notwithstanding their parents 
are members of the church, to the failure 
of God's promise, for some heads of fam- 
ilies, though members of the church, live 
and die unconverted. To such professors 
of religion no promise has ever been made. 

As a general thing, these unconverted pa- 
rents are not even formalists. They live 
without thought. They live carelessly even 
as to the externals of religion. 

Some of them, however, are formalists, 
mistake the nature of religion, and suppose 
that it consists in knowledge and in being 
exemplary as to church duties and outward 
conduct. These latter unrenewed parents 
who are church members — these formalists — 
may not only be careful to have their chil- 
dren baptized, but to have them instructed 
also. Perhaps mistaken ideas of duty lead 
them likewise to subject their families to 
irksome and injurious restraints. And all 
this time they are satisfied and at ease be- 
ll 



162 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

cause they and their children are included 
in the Church. They are like many of the 
Jews of old, who thought themselves safe be- 
cause they were circumcised and were strict in 
observing the duties prescribed in the ritual. 
Yes, the children of unconverted profess- 
ors may be baptized, taught the catechism 
and instructed and restrained, and thus grow 
up well informed, while yet, like their pa- 
rents, they are destitute of all true religion, 
and while they even deny that there is any 
religion beyond an orthodox faith and moral 
conduct. This is a great evil. It is not, 
however, to be avoided by going to the oppo- 
site extreme, and by denying all peculiarity 
of relation between the children of believers 
and the God of their fathers. There is no 
security from any evil but the grace of God 
and the real life of religion in the Church. 
On the one hand, the covenant should not 
be neglected, nor, on the other, should ex- 
ternal formal assent to it be considered as 
all that is necessary. Our safety consists in 
adhering to the word of God, believing what 
he has said, doing what he has command- 
ed, and at the same time looking constantly 
for the vivifying presence and power of his 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 163 

Spirit. Our children, if properly instructed, 
will not be ignorant of the difference be- 
tween obedient and disobedient children of the 
covenant. They will be aware that if insin- 
cere in their professions or unfaithful to their 
engagements, they are only the more guilty 
and exposed to a severer condemnation. 

It is, in short, evident enough that God 
is not to be charged with forgetting his 
promise when the children of church mem- 
bers perish. He has not bound himself to 
save the offspring of irreligious professors, 
though — blessed be his name ! — even such 
are not beyond hope. 

But even when parents are not mere form- 
alists — even when, besides being church mem- 
bers, they are true believers, Christians in re- 
ality — we are by no means shut up to the 
necessity of attributing the ruin of their chil- 
dren, should these come short of eternal life, 
to the failure of the divine promise. For 
the covenant has its conditions, and it will 
be found that in the cases now supposed the 
conditions have not been fulfilled. These 
parents, however sincere in their piety, have 
had little or no belief in God's promise. In- 
deed, perhaps the promises intended for be- 



164 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

lieving parents have never made any impres- 
sion on their minds — have never even been 
known to be contained in the Bible. Besides 
this failure — viz., want of faith in the cove- 
nant — they have failed to fulfill its conditions 
in other ways. They have neglected parental 
duties. They have not sufficiently prayed 
for their little ones. They have not with un- 
speakable pains and tender solicitude brought 
up their children for God. In consequence 
of overrating the importance of the things 
which are seen and temporal, the time which 
should have been devoted to the instruction 
of their children has been given to employ- 
ments not really necessary. Even to pious 
parents the promise does not apply if they 
neglect to use the means for the conversion 
and sanctification of their offspring which 
God has especially appointed. 

A BRIEF CONSIDERATION OF SOME OF THE 
CONDITIONS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF 
WHICH THE PROMISE IS SUSPENDED AS 
FAR AS THE PARENT IS CONCERNED. 

There are degrees of faithfulness in bring- 
ing up children in the nurture and admoni- 
tion of the Lord. Some fathers and mothers 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 165 

may not equal others in this fidelity, while 
yet they cannot be fairly charged with vio- 
lating the condition on which the promise is 
suspended. We shall not, therefore, endea- 
vor to be very precise in showing when you 
fulfill the conditions to be performed before 
the promise can apply to you. Every parent 
will be successful in his attempts to ascertain 
for himself what God would have him do 
who searches the Scriptures for the purpose 
of ascertaining. 

We are safe in saying that the promise is 
not meant for those who do not believe in 
it. You fail to perform a most important 
condition unless you exercise faith in God's 
covenant engagements with reference to your 
children — a faith which will rouse you to 
action. 

Recognizing them as thus included in the 
covenant, in order that you may be entitled 
to plead the promise, you must pray for them 
— not only with them, but for them — and 
that early and late, and without ceasing, and 
with holy boldness, with arguments and tears. 
If many children disappoint parental hopes, 
notwithstanding they have been well instruct- 
ed, it may be because too little prayer was 



166 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

offered for them. You solemnly engaged, 
when you presented your children for bap- 
tism, thus to pray for them. If you keep 
your promise, you will never let a day pass 
without earnest pleadings with God to give 
them his Holy Spirit. Your pleadings will 
ascend from your hearts often during the 
day, even while your little ones are gath- 
ered around you, little thinking of your so- 
licitude on their account, and in the stillness 
of the night, when they are locked in slum- 
ber. You do not truly love them if you can- 
not intercede for them. TTe should not see 
so few early conversions among the children 
of God's people if parents would thus pray. 
The promise of our Saviour would be fulfill- 
ed : "Ask, and ye shall receive." 

But we are not to suppose that prayer will 
evoke the Holy Spirit's power in their behalf 
if we do not exert ourselves to instruct them. 
There is no duty which God more expressly 
commands parents to perform than that of 
diligently teaching their children the truths 
of his word. The soul cannot be saved with- 
out knowledge of the truth, and the necessity 
of such knowledge exists in the case of the 
children of Christians no less than in the 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 167 

case of others. And it must be imparted to 
them early. "Not by chance, not at inter- 
rupted and infrequent seasons, but patiently 
and humbly and week by week, that wonder- 
ful and eternal book must be opened before 
them. Its sublime yet simple truths, plain 
to the child's understanding, its grand proph- 
ets and ardent apostles, its venerable patri- 
archs and its inspired children, must all pass 
in their robes of light and forms of majesty 
and beauty before the child. Its psalms must 
be sung into his soul. Its beatitudes and 
commandments must be fixed in his remem- 
brance. Its parables must engage his fancy. 
Its miracles must awaken his wonder. Its 
cross and ark, and all its sacred emblems, 
must people his imagination. Without that 
Bible no child born among us can come to 
Him whom only the Bible reveals."* 

This early, assiduous and faithful instruc- 
tion in Bible truth, is a large part of that 
nurture which is intended when parents are 
commanded to bring up their children in the 
nurture of the Lord. Many who are con- 
vinced that it is a duty which God requires 

* Sermons for the People, by F. D. Huntington, D.D., 
p. 205. 



168 THESE LITTLE OXES. 

of them still neglect it. And because they 
are conscious of neglect, they cannot hear or 
read these words of God without self-condem- 
nation and reproach : " These words, which 
I command thee this day, shall be in thy 
heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently 
unto thy children, and shalt talk of them 
when thou sittest in thine house, and when 
thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest 
down, and when thou risest up." If, however, 
their children are still young, let them at once 
begin the work, remembering for their en- 
couragement that God has engaged to render 
such nurture effectual, since it is in connection 
with his command thus to bring them up for 
him, that he promises to be their God, give 
his Spirit and renew their hearts. When 
you presented your child for baptism, you 
promised thus to instruct it. 

Restraining our children is another im- 
portant element of that parental faithfulness 
which God requires. Merely to expostulate 
with them will not suffice. The tenderness 
and impressiveness of Eli's expostulations 
with his sons could hardly be exceeded, but 
God was still displeased with him because he 
restrained them not. That steady exercise of 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 169 

authority which trains a child to habits of 
obedience is a means of grace to him. It is 
a means which God has appointed. To keep 
them under proper restraint is what you have 
engaged to do. If with holy solicitude and 
love you endeavor to restrain them wisely 
and at proper seasons, you will then also be 
led to be watchful over them for the purpose 
of guarding them from evil influences. It 
is difficult effectually to guard our little ones 
from evil influences in such a world as this, 
but many professing Christians do not even 
try. They do not make companions of their 
children, and encourage free communications 
on all subjects, and sympathize with them in 
their joys and sorrows. They never exer- 
cise a firm but mild discipline. They pay 
no heed to the declarations and warnings of 
the wisest and best of books. " The rod and 
reproof give wisdom, but a child left to him- 
self bringeth his mother to shame." They 
do not watch their children to know whether 
they are indulging in habits of sin. 

But however faithfully these duties may 
be fulfilled, you cannot be in a position to 
plead the promise with confidence, nor can 
you have much hope of success in your ef- 



170 THESE LITTLE OXES. 

forts to save your children, unless the silent, 
unconscious influence of your character of it- 
self has power (instrumentally, of course) to 
form them unto holiness. They must be 
moulded by your own Christian, holy life. 
We should ever remember that during our 
children's earliest years their spirits are ex- 
quisitely susceptible of impression, and that 
" God does not hold us responsible only for 
the effect of what we do or teach or for acts 
of control and government, but quite as 
much for the effect of our being what we 
are ; that there is a plastic age in the house, 
receiving its type, not from our words, but 
from our spirit — one whose character is 
shaping in the moulds of our own." 

Grace alone can originate holiness in the 
souls of the young, and yet your inward 
character in many of its forms will repro- 
duce itself in your offspring. Parents and 
children of the same family partake of a 
common life ; and it must be so. It is a law. 
This is what Bushnell means by the organic 
unity of the family. He says, " All society 
is organic — the Church, the State, the school, 
the family ; and there is a spirit in each of 
these organisms peculiar to itself and, to some 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 171 

extent at least, sovereign over the individual 
man. We possess only a mixed individuality 
all our life long. A pure, separate, individu- 
al man, living wholly within and from him- 
self, is a mere fiction. No such person ever 
existed, or ever can. The child is only more 
within the power of organic laws than we 
all are. I need not say that this view of an 
organic connection subsisting between parent 
and child lays a basis for notions of Chris- 
tian education far different from those which, 
alas ! now prevail." 

The last sentence of this passage deserves 
to be profoundly considered, but it is a very 
hurtful error to teach, as Bushnell does, that 
by organic natural law the holy character of 
pious parents is transmitted to children just 
as other forms of character are. In no case 
is piety or spiritual life transmitted from pa- 
rent to child. If a child is found to be truly 
holy in his character, we know that he be- 
came holy — in other words, became a new 
creature — by an operation of the Holy Spirit. 
Nothing short of an influence above nature 
— a supernatural influence — ever brought a 
human soul from the condition of spiritual 
death in which it began its existence into a 



172 THESE LITTLE 02s ES. 

state of spiritual life. In the case of some 
children the effectual work of the Spirit may 
antedate the intellectual apprehension of the 
truth, and some doubtless are sanctified from 
the womb and from baptism; but at whatever 
period one may have passed from death unto 
life, the change could only have been wrought 
in him by that mighty power which wrought 
in Christ when it raised him from the dead. 

Still, we do not affirm that the holy charac- 
ter of a good parent exhibited in manifold 
ways in the presence of his child cannot in 
any way influence him for good through the 
operation of organic law. While there is no 
natural law by which the likeness of a pa- 
rent, as far as its Christian graces are con- 
cerned, descends into his child, yet the con- 
stant exhibition of the lovely fruits of the 
Spirit may, and often do, in virtue of the 
laws which God has stamped upon the so- 
cial element of the soul, have a powerful 
influence on the young for good and pre- 
pare them for the saving work of the Spirit. 

It is for this reason that the example of a 
holy life is necessary. Xot only must your 
children be thoroughly instructed in the 
truths of the Bible, unceasingly prayed for 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 173 

and restrained, but they must be subjected 
to the subtle and powerful influence which 
reigns in every house in which the parents 
are holy and spiritually-minded. Your real 
aim and study must be to be the means of in- 
fusing into them a new life, and to this end 
the life of God must perpetually reign in 
you. " Gathered round you as a family, they 
are all to be so many motives strong as the 
love you bear them to make you Christlike 
in your spirit. It must be seen and felt 
with them that religion is a first thing with 
you. And religion must be first, not in 
words and talk, but visibly first in your 
love — that which fixes your aims, feeds your 
enjoyments, sanctifies your pleasures, sup- 
ports your trials, satisfies your wants, con- 
tents your ambition, beautifies and blesses 
your character. This is Christian education, 
the nurture of the Lord/' 

The Christian parent is truly obeying the 
divine injunction to bring up his children 
in the nurture of the Lord who thus by 
his own holy living exerts an influence upon 
them for good. This influence our little 
ones can feel even before reason is developed, 
since even during that early period they are 



174 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

under the power of the parent's character 
and spirit. " Observe/' says Bushnell in a 
chapter of his work entitled When and Where 
Nurture Begins, " how very quick the child's 
eye is in the passive age of infancy to catch 
impressions and receive the meaning of looks, 
voices and motions. It peruses all faces and 
colors and sounds. Every sentiment that 
looks into its eyes looks back out of its eyes 
and plays in miniature on its countenance. 
The tear that steals down the cheek of a 
mother's suppressed grief gathers the little 
infantile face into a responsive sob. ... If 
the child is handled fretfully, scolded, jerked 
or simply laid aside unaffectionately in no 
warmth of motherly gentleness, it feels the 
sting of just that which is felt toward it; 
and so it is angered by anger, irritated by 
irritation, fretted by fretfulness, having thus 
impressed just that kind of impatience or ill 
nature which is felt toward it, and growing 
into the bad mould offered as by a fixed law. 
There is great importance in the manner 
even in the handling of infancy." Again : 
" The child is open to impressions from every- 
thing he sees. His character is forming un- 
der a principle, not of choice, but of nurture. 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 175 

The spirit of the house is breathed into his 
nature day by day. The anger and gentle- 
ness, the fretfulness and patience, the appe- 
tites, passions and manner, all the variant 
moods of feeling exhibited around him, pass 
into him as impressions and become seeds of 
character in him, not because the parents 
will, but because it must be so whether they 
will or not. They propagate their own evil 
in the child, not by design, but under a law 
of moral infection. The spirit of the house is 
in the members by nurture, not by teaching, 
not by any attempt to communicate the same, 
but because it is the air the children breathe." 

We are hardly in danger of overrating the 
power of parental treatment and influence 
even before the development of reason in 
our children, and we may be sure that if our 
spirit is always a Christian spirit in their 
presence previously to that development, and 
that if afterward and during all the periods 
of their childhood and youth our example 
before them is holy, the nurture which they 
receive from us is most blessed. 

It is admitted that many who appear to 
bring up their children religiously are afflict- 
ed by seeing them turn out badly, but per- 



176 THESE LITTLE OXES. 

haps we should not be at a loss for the 
reason of this did we constantly live in the 
family. We might then witness defects, as 
it regards the matter of example and treat- 
ment, which we are now far from suspecting. 
Besides, how do we know that these parents 
are incessantly praying for their children, 
and are exercising that faith in the covenant 
which is required? However intimate may 
be our acquaintance with religious parents 
who are disappointed in their children, we 
cannot see their inner state as God sees it, 
and we are not competent to say that they are 
just the parents to whom the promise applies. 
It is also admitted that sometimes the chil- 
dren of unfaithful parents are lovely in their 
childhood, and even in early life become con- 
sistent members of the church. But God 
has nowhere in his word taught us that he 
will never show mercy to those having such 
parents. Is he not constantly surprising us 
by manifestations of his loving-kindness to 
the unfaithful ? It is true — and it is a cause 
for unspeakable gratitude — "that a large pro- 
portion of the children of God's people, even 
under the most inadequate nurture, ultimate- 
ly, and for the most part in early life, give 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 177 

such evidence of piety that they are admitted 
to the Lord's Supper on a credible profes- 
sion. The proportion is still greater — im- 
mensely greater — in churches which preserve 
unimpaired the true idea of the status of bap- 
tized children, and also keep up the high 
standard of evangelical truth and piety." * 
In order that we may be in the position 
which will qualify us to bring up our little 
ones in the nurture of the Lord, we must hold 
the scriptural idea of their position insisted 
on in the above quotation, for the views which 
are held of their relation to the church, neces- 
sarily determine the question of the manner 
in which they shall be instructed and train- 
ed. Unless we look upon them and act to- 
ward them as heirs of the grace of life, as 
members of the visible Church in conse- 
quence of our being members, as belonging 
to God, as federally holy, our whole manner 
toward them in our training of them will be 
shaped by the opposite view of their position, 
and so we shall fail to obey the injunction to 
bring them up in the nurture and admonition 
of the Lord. 

* Dr. Atwater's Children of the Church. Published by 
the Presbyterian Board of Publication. 
12 



178 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

These are some of the parental duties 
which, if we greatly prize God's covenant 
promise with reference to our children, we 
shall earnestly desire and endeavor to per- 
form. Let us now, in as few words as pos- 
sible, consider — 



THE EFFECT WHICH THIS PROMISE SHOULD 
HAVE UPON US. 

1. The new creation of a soul by the al- 
mighty power of the Holy Spirit, is incon- 
ceivably more wonderful than the creation 
of a world out of nothing. That God is 
able, therefore, to promise us the regenera- 
tion of our children, should have the effect 
of calling forth our adoring wonder. 

2. Another effect which this promise should 
have upon us, is that of allaying parental fears 
and giving us comfort. Perhaps we dread to 
have our little ones grow up to maturity when 
we look around us and see what multitudes 
become in mature life careless of religion, 
salvation, eternity, "and bad and wretched 
themselves and causes of what is bad and 
wretched around them." But here is God's 
kind promise to assure us that our own shall 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 179 

turn out well and be for ever saved, if we 
train them up in the way they should go. 

3. The promise should stimulate us to ex- 
ertion. Our efforts to bring about any result 
must necessarily be feeble if our hopes of 
success are faint. It is only when we can be 
hopeful that we can toil cheerfully and per- 
severe. Some, not feeling the stimulus of 
encouragement in the work, perform parent- 
al duties fitfully and languidly. They have 
never been in the habit of looking upon 
their children as having any particular in- 
terest in the promises of the covenant. They 
expect their children, as a matter of course, 
to be converted, if at all, after arriving at 
the years of discretion. They have no faith 
to animate their prayers or to give vigor to 
their efforts. But let us believe — let us have 
faith in covenant promises — and we shall 
experience the happy effect which such faith 
will have upon us in making us diligent in 
our efforts to promote the spiritual good of 
our children. 

4. When God gave us this promise, it was 
with the design that we should plead it. He 
is therefore grieved if, when we pray for 
our little ones, we do not remind him of 



180 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

it. How many fathers and mothers have 
often prayed sincerely for their children 
without ever once presenting to God his 
own gracious promise ! How strange that 
they should so constantly forget to do it ! 
Let us learn from Israel and Moses and 
other saints of old how to pray, for they 
pleaded the promises. 

5. The liveliest gratitude to God for his 
tender sympathy with us should be excited 
in our hearts. He knows the tender and 
anxious love of parents, and his promise 
shows that he feels and cares for them. 
He sees that they long to have their off- 
spring saved, and therefore he says, " Know, 
therefore, that the Lord thy God he is God, 
the faithful God, which keepeth the cove- 
nant and mercy with them that love him 
and keep his commandments to a thousand 
generations." 

6. We should often talk with our chil- 
dren about this promise. If we permit 
them to remain in ignorance of it, we dis- 
please God; They need the encouragement 
which the promise gives, no less than we 
do. " We should endeavor by our habit- 
ual spirit, by our example, prayers and 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 181 

instruction, to lead them cordially to con- 
sent to the covenant within which they are 
by birth included. We should awaken in 
them the consciousness of their peculiar re- 
lation to God. We should remind them 
that God has made promises to them which 
he has made to no others, and that both 
their privileges and responsibilities are pe- 
culiarly great." We may then hope that 
they will claim God as their God ; while 
they will not be ignorant of the truth that 
their right to do so is founded, not on their 
freedom from sin and condemnation, but 
solely on the promise of God in the cove- 
nant of grace. 

7. We should let our minds dwell daily 
on the infinite good which the promise se- 
cures for our children. It secures for them 
deliverance from Satan, the forgiveness of 
all their sins, adoption, justification, sancti- 
fication and eternal life. Its fulfillment will 
make them possessors of everything worth 
having. In all things they will be con- 
querors through Him that loved them. 

8. When we see that our children have 
been converted to God beyond all doubt, 
and when it is evident to us that they are 



182 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

growing in grace, we should not be satis- 
fied with feeling grateful in our hearts, but 
we should thank God with our lips, and 
that often, for his faithfulness in fulfilling 
his kind promise. 

9. We should be much impressed by the 
thought that, provided our faith in God's 
covenant is very strong, the effects of our 
faith will be far-reaching, and will be felt 
long after we are dead. If our faith is 
vigorous, and if its strength is evinced by 
the manner in which we train up our lit- 
tle ones, then, when these become parents, 
they too will strongly grasp the promise, 
so that their children will be the blessed 
of the Lord. It is almost certain that our 
views of the covenant, and our conduct as 
parents in reference to it, will decide what 
even our distant descendants are to be, and 
w r hat kind of influence in the world those 
descendants will exert. 

10. The promise should not merely be 
looked upon in its relation to ourselves 
personally, but we should consider that it 
indicates God's plan of building up the 
Church. We should desire that a know- 
ledge of the great truth which it teaches as 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 183 

to the divine method of establishing Christ's 
kingdom in the world should be widely dif- 
fused and acted on. Even those who are 
not parents themselves, but who love the 
Saviour and his cause, should be deeply 
interested in the promise, and all classes 
of Christians grieving that it is so little 
understood, and is so neglected, should earn- 
estly pray that it may receive the attention 
of those who now disregard it. Ministers 
of the gospel should have much to say con- 
cerning it in their preaching, and should 
seek to make their hearers familiar with it. 
"The covenant relation of the children of 
believers to God, and the divinely-consti- 
tuted connection between the faith, and faith- 
ful training on the part of parents, and the 
salvation of their children, is a truth to which 
the attention of the Church needs to be di- 
rected in this age, in which an opposite spirit 
so generally prevails." 

The church pledges her members who sus- 
tain the parental relation her assistance and 
sympathy in the arduous work they have to 
perform. She promises to combine her faith 
and importunity with theirs, in pleading 
God's covenant engagement. God expects 



184 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

this of her. He requires her, no less than 
the parent, to take hold of his covenant : " I 
will be a God to thee, and to thy seed after 
thee." 

But besides pleading with faith in con- 
junction with their parents for the children 
born within her pale, she has other duties to 
perform for them ; and touching these duties 
we wish to say a few words before con- 
cluding. 

She is bound to consider them as under 
her government and inspection from begin- 
ning to end, and she is bound to give them 
instruction. It is to the church that the 
Saviour said, "Feed my lambs." Sabbath- 
schools, priceless as they are, do not bind 
the children to the church like ecclesiastical 
instruction tenderly and kindly given — in- 
struction regularly and carefully imparted 
both by the pastor and the elders. "We 
are afraid," said the great and good Dr. 
Archibald Alexander, "that pastors have 
become remiss in this part of their duty 
from the mistaken idea that their labors in 
this field are now superseded s This mis- 
take . should be carefully counteracted ; and 
while the benefits of Sunday-schools are grate- 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 185 

fully acknowledged, the instruction of our 
vouth in the catechisms of our own Church 
should be pursued with increasing diligence." 
He also says : " The business of catechising 
youth seems also to be one of the appropri- 
ate duties of the eldership, for surely these 
officers ought not to be restricted to mere 
matters of order and government. As lead- 
ers of the people they should go before them 
in religious instruction ; and it would be an 
expedient, as it is a common, arrangement to 
have each parish so divided into districts 
that every elder would have a little charge 
of his own to look after, the families within 
which he might frequently visit, and where 
he might frequently collect and catechise the 
youth. If ruling elders are commonly in- 
competent to perform such a work as this, 
they are unfit for the office which they hold, 
and can be of little service in the church in 
other respects. It is now becoming matter 
of common complaint that our ruling elders 
are not generally sensible of the important 
duties which belong to their office, and are 
not well qualified to perform them. But 
how can the evil be remedied ? We answer 
that the effectual remedy will be found in an 



186 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

increased attention to instruction in the doc- 
trines of the Church, by which means many- 
will acquire a taste and thirst for religious 
knowledge; and whenever this occurs, there 
will be rapid progress in the acquisition of 
such a fund of sound theology as will qual- 
ify them to communicate instruction to the 
young and ignorant. In the mean time, let 
every pastor meet with the elders of his 
church once in the week for the express 
purpose of discussing questions which relate 
to the duties belonging to their office, and 
thus those who are really desirous of exe- 
cuting their office in a faithful and intelli- 
gent manner will become better prepared for 
their important work every year." 

Every one must see in the institution of 
the Sabbath-school a special manifestation of 
God's love and tender pity for children out- 
side of the pale of the visible Church, but 
the children of the covenant are in a peculiar 
sense under the charge of the officers of the 
church. They are solemnly bound to man- 
ifest a sincere and tender interest in them 
and to seek to render them conscious of their 
church relations, and certainly it is their 
duty to give them doctrinal instruction as 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 187 

they are able to receive it. If, however, the 
elders come short of their duty to the young, 
pastors should be diligent in meeting, cate- 
chising and exhorting them as children of 
the church. Indeed, under no circumstances 
will a pastor neglect regular catechising if he 
labors faithfully in the word and doctrine. 
" It is an error to study the Bible without 
generalizing its teachings and acquiring some 
conception of it as a whole," but even per- 
sons who have passed the age of childhood 
require the assistance and instructions of the 
pastor in generalizing the teachings of the 
Scriptures. If more pains w 7 ere taken to 
explain the doctrines of the Bible to those 
who are still children, and to illustrate them 
in a way adapted to their capacity, Ave should 
doubtless be surprised at the power of com- 
prehending us which they would evince. "It 
is often asserted that it is impossible for chil- 
dren to understand the Creed. . . . The dif- 
ficulty lies rather in the teacher than in the 
capacity of the pupil or in the intrinsic na- 
ture of the doctrine. He has only a vague 
and general apprehension of revealed truth, 
and has never trained himself to make lu- 
minous and exact statements of it. Any 



188 THESE LITTLE OXES. 

clergyman who is master of Christian theol- 
ogy, and who himself thoroughly understands 
the Creed and catechism, will be able to make 
the youth of his congregation understand it 
also, as others have done before him. ... In 
a long pastorate the people become indoctri- 
nated as a matter of course, in case the pas- 
tor begins to catechise at the opening of his 
ministry." 

The people ought to become at least some- 
what indoctrinated through the labors of the 
pastor even though his pastorate is not very 
long. It is our belief that many good Chris- 
tians — men by no means wanting in culture 
— lament their ignorance of the doctrines of 
the Bible, and sincerely wish that as regards 
these doctrines their pastors would guide and 
instruct them. "A preacher is not a mere 
exhorter, but a ocddaxalo^. Teaching is his 
peculiar official duty." 

Ecclesiastical instruction imparted to the 
young in the way above pointed out, is 
all the more necessary, since experience has 
seemed to show that it is impossible for us 
to have schools and academies under the care 
of the Church. For the efforts made some 
years ago to establish them proved utterly 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 189 

unsuccessful,* and the problem still remains 
to be solved how the children of the Church 
and the youth of our country are to be really 
religiously educated. Can it be possible that 
the anxiety on this subject which not many 
years ago was so extensively felt in the 
Church has entirely died away? Is it no 
longer believed by any one that education 
should be religious — that religion should be 
a regular part of the course of instruction 
in all our non-professional educational insti- 
tutions? Have we now found out that we 
may harmlessly and without opposing any 
command of God entirely banish religion 
from the place of education ? Then we have 
made a discovery which somehow our fathers 
never made, for they, it would seem, " never 
imagined it possible to educate their children 
apart from the supreme object of making 
them intelligent and faithful Christians by 
means of their educational instruction and 
discipline. And this was the view of edu- 
cation substantially which was held by the 
primitive Christians. They counted with as- 
sured certainty upon their retaining by this 

* We refer to Dr. Van Eensselaer's efforts and those 
of his coadjutors. 



190 THESE LITTLE OXES. 

means all their children under the saving in- 
fluences of the covenant. TTe have the best 
evidence that among them it was a matter of 
as confident expectation that all their chil- 
dren would be Christians, as it ever was 
among the Jews that all their children would 
be Jews. This principle gave form and ef- 
ficiency to the educational institutions of 
Christian countries from the time of the 
apostles and the Alexandrian academy, un- 
der the great Origen, to the Reformation, and 
from the Reformation until within the mem- 
ory almost, of some who are now T living." * 
AVere we as consistent as are the millions 
of Mohammed's followers and many heathen 
nations, we should make the Bible, which ice 
profess to believe came from God, the very 
groundwork and text-book of all education. 
The Koran is the sacred book of the Moham- 
medans, and they act as if they sincerely so 
regarded it. Notwithstanding the literature 
which they possess in their books of poetry, 
of romance and of history, and in their origi- 
nal and translated works, they teach the Ko- 
ran so assiduously to their children and 

* See Dr. Mellvaine's article on " Covenant Educa- 
tion" in the Princeton Review for April, 1861. 



THESE LITTLE ONES. 191 

youth that its influence is diffused through 
every department of society and its spirit 
and precepts are practically regarded. We 
are therefore shamed by the very heathen 
and Mohammedans in neglecting as we do 
to use the word of God as an instrument of 
education. It must be so used if our holy 
religion is ever to take hold of the public 
mind. 

But whether we can justly charge the 
Church with neglecting her duty or not in 
failing to have under her care schools and 
academies, the fact remains that she is not 
making use of such educational institutions 
for the purpose of religiously educating her 
children, and therefore, as was said, pastors 
have all the more reason to be exceedingly 
diligent in attending to the catechetical in- 
struction of the children and youth. Were 
they generally faithful in the performance of 
this duty, who can estimate the blessed re- 
sults which would follow? Dr. Shedd, in the 
last chapter of his splendid work on homi- 
letics and pastoral theology, considers the 
influence of catechising on the congregation. 
He says (each of these points is admirably 
handled) that catechising the children and 



192 THESE LITTLE ONES. 

youth results even in the indoctrination of 
the adults ; that it protects the youth against 
infidelity and spurious philosophy; that it 
promotes a better understanding of the word 
of God in the congregation ; that it renders 
the youth more intelligent hearers of preach- 
ing; that it induces seriousness among the 
youthful part of the congregation ; that it 
results in frequent conversions ; and that it 
results in genuine conversions. 



THE END. 



